The lower end of Manhattan Island was all alive with fire under a hovering sky of smoke. RoBards and Chalender craned their necks now and then to correct their course toward the masts of the live-oak war frigates, standing like a burned forest against the sky. At last their skiff jarred the float at the landing place. Sailors and marines caught their hands and made fast the painter and asked foolish questions whose answers they knew well enough. Chalender demanded an audience with the officer in command, and his voice sent men darting to the powder house. Boats were loaded with kegs and manned and pushed out into the river. It was not so lonely returning. But far overhead the river that had never been bridged, was bridged now by a long arch of driven embers, a stream like a curved aerial river, an infernal rainbow promising destruction, linking Brooklyn to New York as Gomorrah was joined with Sodom in a deluge of brimstone. When at length the powder bringers reached the docks again, carrying ruin to fight ruin with, they hastened to the nearest point in the widening scarlet circle and selected a building once removed from the blazing frontier. The owner, Mr. Tabelee, and a few laborers were loading his wares into a wagon which he had just bought from the driver. When the marines and civilians came to him and said that they were about to blow up his building, Mr. Tabelee ordered them about their business. Chalender answered: “Our business is the salvation of our city from complete destruction. You ought to be glad to sacrifice your store.” “Sacrifice hell!” Tabelee roared. An alderman and two city watchmen came up. They lent their authority to Chalender, and restrained the protesting Tabelee while the marines entered the building. It was lighted with the new-fangled system of gas, a dangerous and doubtless short-lived fashion. Down to the cellar went Chalender, RoBards, and a group of powder bearers with two kegs. They set down one keg and thrust an upright plank between the head of it and the ceiling of the cellar, so that the cellar explosion should be transmitted to the floor above. There were baskets of champagne in this cellar. Marines stripped the bottles of their straw jackets, piled them up and made a fuse by sprinkling powder on a tape they laid along the floor and up the stairs out into the street. When the train was ready a spark was snapped at the outer end of the fuse, and the spectators ran in one direction while the fire ran like a sparkling mouse in the other. Boom! The building split and caved in and a cheer went up at the triumph over the fire. But the fire had the last laugh for the splintered timbers made a lively kindling and the building which was supposed to act as a barrier simply added itself as fuel. This was one of those iron jokes the gods alone can laugh at.