hed the ground, whilst others were
seized and carried off by the thieves and vagabonds who came
swarming out of the dens of the low-lying parts of the city, eager
to turn the public calamity into an occasion of private gain, and
lost no opportunity of appropriating in the general confusion
anything upon which they could lay their hands.

"Pray Heaven the means we have taken may be blessed to the city!"
cried James Harmer, as he hurried along.

He found his men hard at work pumping water and drenching the ruins
with it; for, as they said, the great heat dried up the moisture
with inconceivable rapidity, and if once these ruins fired, nothing
short of a miracle could save the remainder of the houses. Other
stout fellows were upon the roofs with their buckets, emptying them
as fast as they were filled upon the roofs and walls, so that when
burning fragments and showers of sparks or even a leaping billow of
flame smote upon them, it hissed like a live thing repulsed, and
died away in smoke and blackness.

It was the same when the flames reached the gap which had been made
in the buildings by the Master Builder. The angry fire leapt again
and again upon the drenched ruins, but each time fell back hissing
and throwing off clouds of steam.

For above two long hours that seemed like days the hand-to-hand
fight continued, resolute and determined men casting water
ceaselessly upon the ruins and the roofs and walls of the adjoining
houses, the fire on the other side of the gap blazing furiously,
and seeking to overstep it whenever a puff of wind gave it the
right impetus. Had the wind shifted a point to the south, possibly
nothing could have saved the bridge; but the general direction was
northeast, and it was only an occasional eddy that brought a rush
of flames to the southward. But there was great peril from the
intense heat generated by the huge body of burning buildings close
at hand, and from the flying splinters and clouds of sparks.

Fearlessly and courageously as the workers toiled on, there were
moments when their hearts almost failed them, when it seemed as
though nothing could stop the oncoming tyrant, which appeared more
like a living monster than a mere inanimate agency. But as the
daylight waned, it began to be evident that victory would be with
the devoted workers. Although the ever-increasing light in the sky
told them that in other directions the fire was spreading with
tireless fury, in the neighbourhood