University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER THIRTY-THIRD.
PETER BECOMES A FAIRY.

With these words expressed without the
least appearance of heat, Peter raised his
right arm, and showed his right hand, high
over the heads of the combatants.

“Jist strike this man agin,” he cried, “and
you'll find me thar!”

Surprised for a moment by this apparition,
the combatants presently recovered their presence
of mind.

“Go way old man, this is a private fight —”

“Sarve him out! Give a horn over his top-knot
—”

“Hey! Hey! Down with him, down with
'em both —”

“He's a Fairy — let him have it —”

And accordingly one of the combatants,
struck Peter in the breast, just as the solitary
Fairy, protected for a moment by his intervention,
was rising from his knees.

`Come, children you better go home and
let your mammies spank you and put you to
bed.”

With these paternal remarks, Peter described
a circle with his right hand, followed
by a circle with his left, at the same time projecting
his right foot with sudden and rapid
force.

“Lord! how the old hoss mows 'em down!”
ejaculated the admiring Fairy.

It was indeed true. Peter in sober verity
had “mowed 'em down.” He went through
them, with great composure, using his hands
and feet at the same instant, and littering
the ground with the forms of the Fairy's
enemies. Two alone resisted his progress,
making desperate battle, over the heaps of
their wounded comrades, but Peter seized
them by the neck, and knocked their heads
together, until they dropt like ripe apples to the
ground.

“Where did you larn it, hoss?” cried the
admiring Fairy, seizing Peter's hand — “Jist
larn me how to mow — do.”

But there was not much time for conversation.
The battle which had been raging in the
middle of the street, now rolled toward the
sidewalk, and entangled Peter and “the Fairy
boy” in its vortex. Fifty other Fairies were
battling with as many of Crocodiles. They
fought around the Engine, and Peter much
against his will, was forced to strike right and
left, in order to save himself from being trampled
under foot. Soon the Rats, the Bouncers,
the Blue Injins, and the Snappers, joined the
fray, and the Hornets came hurrying to the
ranks of war. It was no longer a fight of
feuds, a war of clans, but a promiscuous battle,
in which every one struck his neighbor without
regard “to party or creed.” Peter mingled
in the broil, and fought like a buffalo at bay.

Charles Lester, gazing from the sidewalk
beheld the scene, as an hundred faces streaming
blood were illuminated by the glare of the
burning house. Soon he lost sight of Peter.
He then made his way as best he might in
the direction taken by the Preacher and the
girl.

The day was breaking, and the fight was
raging, when a sound like the thunder of an
hundred cannon, drowned the yells of the
combatants, and made every one start, as
though a magazine of gunpowder had exploded
near his feet.

The cause of this sound merits an explanation.

While the fight was in progress, the fire,
which had been slowly yielding to the force
of the engines, blazed up with increased vigor.
One by one, the windows of the mansion, from
the second story to the roof gave out a torrent
of flame. The roof itself was one mass of
fire — fire that shot up into the canopy of
smoke in long and tremulous flames. The
western wing of the mansion was on fire from

foundation to roof, and the wind swept the
flames to the main building with the force and
thunder of a tropical hurricane.

Far over the city flashed the light of the
burning mansion, far over the wilderness of
roofs and the waters of the Delaware, spread
that vast volume of smoke, reddened in every
fold, until it resembled an immense pall tinged
with blood.

And the State House Bell never ceased to
strike. Toll, toll, toll — it rung as though it
was pealing a funeral knell.

The battle in the street, and the flames of
Brother Caleb's house, raged together. The
startled denizens of Drab Row, alarmed for
their safety, were projecting their heads from
every window, and from the houses immediately
adjoining Goodleigh's, crowds of half
clad men and women, and heaps of costly furniture,
began to stream in an unceasing torrent.

And the fire burning fiercely on, had long
enveloped the Iron Room in a shroud of flame.

At last the timbers beneath the Iron Room
gave way, and the huge mass plunged with a
horrible crash into the depths of the fiery whirlpool.
As it fell, crashing from floor to floor,
the fire was suddenly darkened. A volume of
inky smoke rose from the depths of the mansion,
and then the sky was strown with countless
sparks, glittering through the darkness
like a meteoric shower.

It was the fall of the Iron Room, which had
produced the sound resembling the combined
thunder of an hundred cannon. It was the
darkness which followed this awful sound, that
brought the combatants to a pause, and sent a
thrill through the nerves of a thousand infuriated
men.

The Iron Room had fallen.

Where now is Goodleigh and the Converted
Monk?

The darkness did not last long. The flames
rushed once more into the sky, as though the
fall of the Iron Room had only deadened their
fury for a moment. The street was once
more bright as noonday. It was no longer
Goodleigh's house that was threatened, but the
mansions of the entire square.

A voice was heard through the death-like
stillness, which had descended upon the
crowded street.

Giant Peter mounted upon the “Fairy”
engine, with the marks of the late combat on
his face, seized a trumpet and made himself
heard along the entire square:

“Put out the fire, boys,” he shouted, “An
let's fight arterwards.”

The suggestion was received with cheers.
In a moment engines and firemen were at their
work again. Separate columns of water were
playing upon the roofs of Drab Row. Mounting
to the roofs, nine sturdy firemen, with hose
pipes in their hands, poured as many torrents
into the abyss of Goodleigh's house. Snappers,
Hornets, Crocodiles, Bouncers, Blue
Injins and Tartars, buried their feuds for awhile,
and with all might of fire-plugs and engines,
went to work sturdily to accomplish the salvation
of Drab Row.

And Peter, high on the Fairy Engine, was
working with the Fairies, his giant form rising
and bending, as he continued to encourage them
with the oft-repeated remark—

“Put out the fire boys, an' arterwards we
can lick one another like blazes”

When the sun arose, Drab Row was saved.
But Goodleigh's house was a mass of blackened
ruins. The walls alone remained, begrimed
with smoke and dripping with water. Floors,
windows, doors, everything but the brick walls
had been consumed by the flames.

And buried beneath masses of smouldering
timber, the Iron Room, rested in the depths of
the cellar, its panels still joined together, but
heated red hot by the surrounding fire.

Descending from the “Fairy” as the sun
shone over his scarred and blackened face,
Peter cast his eyes over the crowd, who
thronged the sidewalk, blackened with cinders,
and piled with heaps of damaged and broken
furniture:

“Where's Lester?” he ejaculated aloud.

“Where's Goodleigh?” cried a stout gentleman
near his side: “That's the question.”

It was Stewel Pydgeon, who stood on the
curbstone, gazing toward the walls of the house,
whose desolate windows, still gave passage to
clouds of inky smoke.

“What do I know of Goodleigh?” answered
Peter, surveying the Police officer, with a
vague stare.

`Don't be affronted Sir,” replied Stewel
with a saddened air — “I had a warrant for
him, but he's gone and burnt hisself to death,
in that cussed house. That's all. But I have
some feelin's and a thing like this never happened
to me afore.”

It was not until the close of the day, that
the fire which smouldered in the depths of the
ruined mansion, yielded to the combined force
of a half a dozen engines.

Stewel, anxious to discover some trace of
Goodleigh, hovered all day, near the blackened
walls. More than once he determined to descend
into the cellar, and search among the
smouldering timbers for the body of Goodleigh.
Of course no idea of Goodleigh's wealth
buried in the ruins ever entered Stewel's
brain.