The Fire Kings pushed on, with ardor dwindling as the magnificence of their task was revealed to them. They were scant of breath and footsore and cold, and their helmets rattled with flying embers. Embers were streaming across the river to Brooklyn and the people there sat on their roofs and wondered if their town must follow New York to destruction. On all the roofs in New York, too, shadowy bevies fought off the embers and flung them into the street. The fire companies were driven back in all directions. They felt as tiny and futile as apes fumbling and chittering against a forest blaze. By and by the bells ceased to ring. The tollers were too cold to pull the ropes—and what was the use of going on alarming those who were already in a panic? Yet the silence had an awe of doom in it. Merchants and their women cursed and wept, and tears smeared smoky faces. It was maddening to be so useless; firemen sobbed blasphemies as soldiers did when wet powder rendered them ridiculous and mocked their heroism. Their nostrils smarted with the acrid stench from bubbling paint and varnish, from mountains of chewing tobacco, cigars, and snuff, from thousands of shoes and boots and hats and household furnishings. Miles of silk and wool and cotton, woven and prettily designed, were all rags now that smoldered, or flew on the wind like singed birds, awkward ravens frightened out of some old rookery. Stage coaches and busses were caught in the lanes and consumed. The shops of the jewelers crumpled and broke inwardly as well as the hovels of the carpenters. Diamonds and rubies, emeralds, chains of fine gold, and cunning devices in frosted silver were fused and jumbled among black piles of rubbish. Numberless casks of liquor blew up and shot curiously tinged sheets of fire through the wallowing flames. Thieves rifled liquor stores, and drunken wastrels, hilarious or truculent, reeled about as if an insane asylum had opened its gates. These wretches had to be saved from themselves, and they added a new terror to the reign of terror. Every distress and mockery imaginable seemed to combine to make the night maudlin, an infamous burlesque. As a part of the night’s irony the firemen were blistered by both fire and frost. While cold gales bit their necks and backs, and the wet streets congealed their feet to mere hobbles, the blast from the flames blistered their cheeks. Everywhere the pavements squirmed with black snakes of hose, limp and empty; for the hydrants were frozen, the cisterns sucked dry. In the face of such fire, little new fires had to be started around the hydrants to thaw them out, but when the water came it turned to ice in the hose as the chilled engines refused to work. It was madness to stand and wait in imbecile palsy while the holocaust flourished. “Water! water! in God’s name where can we get water!” the men shrieked at one another. Finally Harry Chalender seized a trumpet and bawled through it: “To the wharf!”