Thus it was that the wild hegira did not begin from the front until the arrival of the fire department. Then pandemonium itself broke loose. All restraining influences from the stage had ceased. At the appearance of the all-consuming wave of flame sweeping across the auditorium the boy ushers abandoned their posts and fled for their lives, leaving the packed audience to do the same unhampered. Unhampered--not quite! Darkness descending upon the scene, doors locked against the frightened multitude, fire escapes cut off by tongues of flame and exits and stairways choked with the bodies of those who died fighting to reach safety hampered many--at least the six hundred carried out later mangled and roasted, their features and limbs twisted and distorted until little semblance to humanity remained. After the first wild dash, in which a large portion of those on the main floor escaped, the blackness of night settled upon the long marble foyer leading from Randolph street to the auditorium. It settled in a cloud of black, fire laden smoke--death in nebulous forms defying fire fighter and rescuer alike to enter the great corridor. None entered, and, more pitiful still, none came forth. While this situation maintained in front a vastly different scene unfolded in the rear. The theater formed a great L, extending north from Randolph street to an alley and, in the rear, west to Dearborn street. This last projection, the toe of the L, was occupied by the stage, theoretically the finest in America, if not in the world. Thus the auditorium and stage occupied the extreme northern part of the structure, paralleling an alley extending on a line with Randolph street from State street to Dearborn street. This alley wall was pierced by many windows and emergency exits and was studded with fire escapes built in the form of iron galleries, and stairways hugging close to the wall leading to the alley. To these exits and the long, grim galleries of fire escapes the herded, fire-hunted audience surged. Those who reached doors that responded to their efforts found themselves pushed along the galleries by the resistless crush behind. As was the case in front, half way to safety another stream of humanity was encountered pouring out at right angles from another portion of the house. Coming together with the impact of opposing armies the two hosts of refugees gave unwilling and terrible answer to the time worn problem as to the outcome of an irresistible force encountering an immovable body. Both in front and rear great mounds of dead spelled annihilation as the answer. In front over 200 corpses piled in a twenty-foot angle of a stairway where two balcony exits merged told the terrible tale, and rendered both passages useless for egress, the dead being piled up in wall-like formation ten feet high.