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CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BURNING OF CLOSE'S ROW.
The career of Puffer Hopkins |  |
28.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BURNING OF CLOSE'S ROW.
At day-wages the broker could not have toiled more
painfully. Early and late, he was busy, with stick and
basket, in alley, highway and thoroughfare. He groped
every kennel, and questioned every heap in the ward. After
a shower he might be seen hovering about the street-pools
he could not have driven his trade with more diligence.
He was specially careful to ply his business where he would
fall under the eye of certain gentlemen, pointed out to
him by the vigilance of Mr. Small, as possessing a talent
for observation, and an obliging disposition in coming forward,
which would render them very useful in the event
of any little matter of Mr. Close's being brought before the
courts. This was a class of sharp-eyed small-tradesmen,
who were always in their doors, or at the corner, or coming
through a street, or passing to a ferry, or doing something
or other, which enabled them to be eye-witnesses of more
than half the stage-accidents, brawls, frays, and other
street-incidents of the whole city. As Fyler passed the doors
of these vigilant observers, he would place his basket on
the ground, his crook lying across it, and proceed to rap his
forehead with great violence with his knuckles; which
performance over, he would take up his basket and proceed
to his work, knocking his brow steadily through the
day, at the rate of about three knocks to a square. There
was, among his prospective witnesses, one in particular—
a dealer in crockery—of such an extremely acute turn of
mind as to have been known in a case of manslaughter
tried at the Oyer and Terminer, to have seen the blow
struck, standing in his own shop-door, and looking through
two bow windows, to the other side of a corner where the
affray had happened; identifying the prisoner by the color
of his hair. There was a valuable man for Mr. Close!
and when he came along the front of his shop, the knocking
was very violent and long-continued, and varied by a
succession of lively leaps over the basket, back and forth,
as it stood upon the ground.
Ishmael, in the mean time, performed the part cast to
him, by happening in the neighborhoods where Fyler plied
his calling, and taking occasion to point him out to various
doctors, as a worthy old gentleman, (reduced in circumstances)
a little beside himself, and whom he would be
sorry to see committing any violence, such as braining a
child or the like, they had furnished him with certificates
of his condition, and learning that he was a friend of the
poor old gentleman's begged him, in Heaven's name, to
take him straight to Bellevue.
One night—Fyler had been missed from all his customary
rounds that day—towards its close, there was a portentous
cry sounded through the city. A flame, no larger
than a man's hand, had been seen to flicker through the
ground window of a wooden building, and presently the
whole city was astir. At first, two or three distracted
men, in leathern hats—they had been the first to discover
it—ran up and down the adjacent streets, shouting at the
top of their lungs, Fire! Fire! Then a score or two of
neighbors tumbled out of their beds, and taking it up,
with the scantiest possible apparel for a public appearance,
hurried about the block echoing the cry. Then other distracted
people, bursting out at front doors, which went to after
them with a crash, scrambling up from cellars or down from
garrets where they lodged, tore through the streets. Presently
a reinforcement of men in leathern hats appeared,
rushing in wherever there was a lane or square or alley,
and renewing the shout. Fire! Fire! From various taverns
and rooms about the city where dancing had been kept
up to a late hour, certain young gentlemen—casting off
their coats and leaving them in charge of their fair partners—by
which, it appeared when the red shirts came to
be disclosed, that they were volunteer firemen in disguise—
broke into the street, rushed distractedly about for a few
minutes, until they had fixed their gripe upon an engine-rope,
when setting forward, they aimed, with many others
in a like plight, fbr the spot where the blaze was now
mounting into a beacon-light.
The throng and tumult—which deepened every minute—
centred about a row of wooden buildings standing in a
back yard. The flame had a sure hold upon his prey,
and coiled round, striking it over and over again, in some new
and vulnerable point with its tongues of fire. Every bell
in the metropolis was now sounding, and new forces came
hurrying into the yard; the engines clattered over the
fence which had been thrown down, and began to take
their order—the flame seemed to know it all, thrusting out
a broad red face from the windows, to welcome them,
skipping with a nimble step up and down the stairs, and
dancing about the roof and in the very eaves for joy, to
see so many friends about. The crowd swelled, till it
and all the neighboring streets.
The roofs, stoops and windows all about were filled
with faces that glowed in the flame; and even on the
house tops, far away, a single figure, sometimes more,
might be described standing out against the sky. The
hoarse trumpets of the engineers sounded—the hose had
been dropped in the cisterns—there was a thumping of
engine arms—a thin jet of muddy water rose against the
flame, and the fire bounded up livelier than ever. The
supply had given out. The river was tried, and now they
would have gone on triumphantly, had not a discovery
been made to the effect that all the tall men on the engines
were wasting their strength in hoisting up certain short
gentlemen and half-grown youths, who had fastened upon
the engines, that they, the short gentlemen, might be in
reach of the arms to do their part in bringing them down
again. As soon as this was amended—by ejecting the short
gentlemen and their associates, in a body, peremptorily
from the yard, from returning to which they were only
restrained by the officers' staves that began to ply about—
they made head. The inmates now came hurrying
out—men, women, and children—bearing in their arms
some little worthless trifle, and casting back a frightened
look upon the burning row. There was one, a stout man,
who carried in his arms as tenderly as though it had been a
child, a glass case shrouded in crape, which concealed, as
might be guessed by such glimpses as the flame allowed,
what seemed some child's toy or other. Then a lean man,
with great staring eyes came out with a run, and looked
about him as though something had happened on a much
grander scale than he had expected. As soon as this person
had recovered himself a little, he borrowed from one
of the companies a couple of fire-buckets, filling which
constantly, (although some considerable rents in the sides
and bottoms prejudiced his labors not a little) he did what
he could, running back and forth, towards extinguishing
the fire. They had now all escaped from the row except
one; and that one, (the stout cobbler) instead of descending
quietly like a christian and good citizen, was seen
tramping and dancing about the roof like a mad-man;
throwing his hat into the air and catching it, with other
to understand each other well. They shouted to him to
come down, to little purpose; they sent up huge jets of
water, and these he shook from his ears like a great dog that liked the sport. Even a fireman, who had acquired
a great name by his prowess in bringing old men and
women out of dormer windows down the long ladder,
and who had been constantly climbing up and down the
same and calling to any that might be lurking there, roasting
privily, to come out,—even he had gone to the very top
round and besought the cobbler, in vain. In his own
good time, and when everybody thought there was no
escape for him—a minute before the roof tumbled in—
he came hand over hand down the lightning-rod fixed
against the gable, and reached the ground without a
scratch. Once down, instead of employing his time in
rescuing what he could, he devoted himself with extraordinary
ardor to casting such articles of furniture, bedposts,
chairs or utensils, as he could lay hands on, into
the flames; which, hurrying from point to point, he kept
feeding as he would a hungry dog that had found great
favor in his eyes for the very force of his appetite. So
the cobbler kept the fire alive; and diminished more and
more the stock of property whose distinctions it was his
pleasure to loathe and help to level.
Whenever a rafter yielded or a heavy timber fell in, a
spare, old figure, apparently availing himself of the new
light that flamed up to the sky and fell back, reflected on
the earth, was seen stealing about, bearing a basket
on his arm, and in his hand a crooked stick, with which he
drew from the heaps small charred bits of wood and
worthless cinders, and filled his basket.
At times he paused in his painstaking task, and going
about to the circle nearest the fire, he removed his hat,
and extending it to each, in turn, begged piteously, both
with look and voice, for alms, a penny only—a penny only
for a ruined man. Whenever they refused him, as they
often did, not knowing him as the owner of the burning
Row—he would turn away, and mutter in answer to questions
which no one had addressed to him.
"You are right, sir," he would say; "the man's leg
was out of joint, and General Washington thought a
forward, he would pause at a heap, and begin counting
cinders into his basket, as though it had been so much
solid coin. Such as knew the broker heaved a sigh of compassion.
Fyler Close was certainly distracted—gone mad
beyond all controversy. No wonder, they said to themselves;
such a blow—meaning the burning of his buildings—was
enough to unsettle any man's senses.
Ishmael too was on the ground, displaying a praiseworthy
and astonishing activity in his endeavors to save
what he could from the wreck, so as not to bankrupt the
Phœnix Company at once! Every other minute he was
diving into the Row, at the seeming peril of his neck, but
taking good care to emerge at an early opportunity by
means of an outlet on the other side, which he knew of,
tarrying in the cellar only long enough to whistle such a
tune as might lead the by-standers to scamper off, dropping
whatever they had in their hands and protesting that
there was a goblin in the vault. And when at length the
flames reached the lightning-maker's loft, there was a
dozen reports or more in succession, a broad sheet of all
colors, blood red and lightning blue predominating, shot up
into the sky—there was an involuntary clapping of the
hands on the part of the juvenile portion of the crowd—
Ishmael stood by, as ardent, but more secret, in his applause
than any. At the moment of the illumination—
which had been duly announced in advance, by the explosion—the
lightning-maker, who was still busy with his
impracticable buckets, paused in his labors, and looking
up, a smile crossed his pallid face. His works had gone
off to the satisfaction of his audience, and he was almost
content; although his wife and children stood in the next
yard with scarcely a rag to their backs.
This brilliant display seemed to have a peculiar effect
upon Mr. Close: for he ran about while its brightness lasted,
with extraordinary nimbleness pointing it out to every
one in the yard, and saying in a wild way, “That's the
man—his name is John Augustus Jones, and he owes me
one and nine pence for tapping his heels.”
How mad the poor broker was! The fire kept burning
—although it began to yield—rolling up smoke and flames,
which, mixing together, passed off in a turbid cloud towards
and the flames, at one time, driven hither and thither by
the wind, laid eager hold of houses, and sheds, and
churches, so that had not men flitting about with buckets,
driven them back, the whole neighborhood would have
been in a blaze.
But now it began to yield, and the broker moved about in
its flickering light. He was suddenly accosted by a person of a
bluff physiognomy, strengthened with huge black whiskers,
who, taking him by the arm, would have drawn him quietly
aside. Fyler turned, and, regarding him with a look of great
steadfastness and severity, requested his arm to wither.
The arm did not wither, but, on the contrary, seemed to
acquire, by the very behest, a greater tenacity of gripe;
which, when Fyler discovered it, he attributed to the circumstance
of his having touched it with the wrong hand.
"This will do, old chap," said the other, transferring
his hold to the collar and drawing the broker about with
very little regard to the established usages of society;
"We've had enough of this. These buildings were heavily
insured, and you're wanted down town on business.
Come, I know you well enough, Mr. Fyler Close."
"You lie, sir, allow me to say," rejoined the broker,
turning upon his assailant. "I am Barabbas, the king of
the Jews, and my mother's Mary Scott the clear-starcher
in Republican Alley. I am Barabbas, I tell you, and you
owe me for the whiskers you've got on."
"It wont do, uncle," said the officer, "It's a capital
fetch—but your primin's wet; you must come." Whereupon,
folding the broker's arm closely in his own, and
putting on the air of his bosom-friend taking him out on a
pleasure excursion against his will, he drew him along.
Some of the by-standers who had been moved by the
affecting manner in which Fyler had conducted himself
through the evening murmured a little, but refrained from
active interference. Ishmael, who had held himself
aloof—and who, to tell the truth, had observed the eye of
the black-whiskered man more than once fixed on his
friend, during the fire, and who noticed that he went off,
and returned whispering with another before he left,
(which observations there had been, however, no opportunity
by his side and pressed his hand.
Fyler knew the hand, and felt its pressure. In that
there was some hope yet.
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BURNING OF CLOSE'S ROW.
The career of Puffer Hopkins | |