"Burning bad coal whatever," a.s.sented Mac. "Why, it"s getting bigger!"
Marmaduke, watching intently, suddenly started up.
"By George, it is odd! I believe--by heavens, gentlemen, it is a fire!"
They all followed his example. And now there could be no doubt. With amazing rapidity the cloud darkened, deepened, then in the departing daylight showed dusky red. And there--flashing up suddenly came a great fork of flame. Marmaduke looked round on the others.
"The town is tinder," he said briefly, "and the magazines---- We had best be off!"
There was no need for more. In truth there was danger. The wind blew westwards. There were no fire-engines, so every man might be wanted.
And now the sound of fire alarms on the men-of-war echoed out stridently, and boatload after boatload of blue-jackets, armed with pumps and pipes, shot from every ship. Almost before Marmaduke was on his horse, after ordering fatigue parties to come on at the double, streams of water were pouring on the burning houses. To no purpose.
The fire had originated in a wine and oil shop and both burnt fiercely. By the time he reached the town but one word was on the lips of every responsible officer--"The magazines!" They were full up. On them depended the possibility of the attack on Sebastopol; on them therefore hung the fortunes of war. They stood still far from the blazing town, but it burnt like the matchwood it was, and between them and it lay, as it were, nothing but fresh tinder ready to take fire at a spark.
"Those houses should come down, sir," suggested Marmaduke to a general, and almost before a.s.sent answered him, had sprung to organise the work. But ramshackle, tumbledown though the wooden piers and pilasters seemed, they were curiously strong, needing time for destruction. Hawsers were brought ash.o.r.e to facilitate the job and parties told off to each house. Three hundred soldiers--mostly French--lay to manfully on one of the ropes, pulling for all they were worth, when just as the house they were tackling began to totter a loud explosion came from within. And, lo! the only two men left on that rope were Marmaduke and a young French officer who clicked his heels together and stood to the salute with a merry "_Mes compliments, mon Colonel!_"
"_a vous, Monsieur le Capitaine!_" returned Marmaduke laughing, as he rallied the men.
"It"s not the magazines, boys!" he called. "We"ve to save that yet.
Yo-ho--heave ahoy!"
They set to again with a will; but the flames gained ground every instant and the densely dark cloud of smoke drifting over the magazines showed alive with ominous shoals of sparks.
"Mac!" shouted Marmaduke, as he worked like a demon, when his major came hurrying past with another fatigue party. "Get hold of someone and suggest the commissariat blankets; there are bales and bales of them somewhere. Put them on the magazine roofs, soak "em with water.
Tell the blue-jackets----"
"All right, sir!" shouted back the major.
And thereon came blankets, bales on bales of them, and blue-jackets swarming up and over everything, and jets of water turned from their useless work on houses that would burn, to keep those blankets sodden.
The din was deafening. The inhabitants, swept out of their houses, stood huddled in the streets and kept up a constant wail. The bugle calls rang out here, there, and everywhere, and above the roar and crackle could be heard voices in urgent exhortation--"All together, men! The blue-jackets are laughing at you!" "Heave away, I say, boys, show the land-lubbers how to do it!" Or shriller, more pa.s.sionate--"_A moi, mes enfants! Les Anglais nous regardent!_"
Once there came a sudden pause. The red flare of the conflagration changed to brilliant blue.
"_Milles tonnerres!_" cried the French soldiers sadly, as they recommenced work. "_Ahe, le bon eau-de-vie!_" Their commissariat canteen store had gone.
So through the long night they worked, fighting the flames with their hands for the most part. Fatigue party after fatigue party poured into the town and one strong man after another lay down exhausted on the quays and begged someone to cool him with water.
It was just as a faint lightening over the sea in the east showed dawn was nigh that Marmaduke, wiping the sweat from his blackened forehead, said--
"I think that"s done with. The magazines are safe now!"
"Yes," said a man near him, "up here it"s almost over. But they"ve got it still down there, by the dock wharves, poor devils!"
Marmaduke, whose every thought and look had hitherto been for the magazines, turned to the lower part of the town.
"By Jove, they have!" he cried. "Here, men, follow me!"
"Let me go, sir," put in a subaltern. "You must be done--and they should all be out of their houses by now."
He might as well have saved his breath. Marmaduke, careless of fatigue, was racing to danger again. And here it was greater. The two or three story ramshackle houses almost closed in upon each other, and in one burnt-out street he had to pa.s.s through, a charred beam almost finished him. But he raced on; and here there was evidence that the fire had been faced with some method. Houses had been pulled down, the inhabitants ordered to certain open s.p.a.ces, and as he neared the spot where the tenements almost overhung the water"s edge, a double line of men were pa.s.sing buckets. There were only two houses left in the street; one was in flames, the other, overhanging the water, must soon go. Seeing the hopelessness of saving it, or indeed the use, since evidently those were the occupants who, with shrill cries and excited gestures, were watching the destruction of their property, he was about to seek work elsewhere when a big fat woman almost overset him in her eagerness to find his feet. To these she clung, shrieking at the top of her voice--
"Maryam Effendi! Maryam Effendi! _Elle est la, elle est la! Sauvez le--Sauvez le_----"
He would have been at a loss even to grasp the last words had not a figure shown at that moment on the roof of the burning house. It was the figure of a tall woman in white and the flare of the flames showed that she carried a baby in her arms.
"My G.o.d!" he muttered under his breath, for there seemed no possibility of escape.
"Maryam Effendi! Maryam Effendi!" wailed the crowd, adding in mixed French and Turkish--"She has the child! Ah, the brave woman! She has the child!"
Aye, she had it, and she meant to hold it, too! A brave woman indeed!
Pausing for a second in her perilous effort to pa.s.s from one roof to the other, she pulled off her veil, wrapped it round the child, and knotted it high above her shoulders. Then, hands and knees, set herself to her task. But the flames were almost too quick for her. And forked tongues licked at her feet; the next instant she was beyond them and, straightening herself, walked rapidly over a level strip.
And now from below, where even Marmaduke stood arrested, helpless, watching another"s fight for life, came a soft wail of horror. The last house had caught fire from below, the flames were surging upwards, the thin shingle roof might be gone any moment.
"Jump, for G.o.d"s sake, jump!" cried Marmaduke, his voice vibrant with awful dread. "Jump, we"ll catch you, somehow!"
Even as he spoke he felt the uselessness of his appeal to one who could not understand.
"Tell her to jump--we"ll catch her!" he added dully, knowing there was no time, for already ominous crackings rose from the flames that mounted higher and higher.
But that familiar voice had reached the ears of the woman clinging her way for dear life, and tightened her hold upon the ridge-pole that was her only hope. No, she would not die yet! She would not die with that voice in her ears!
A faint shudder came from the crowd below as, with a crash, the roof fell in. A fainter moan of relief followed, as the woman with her pack still showed standing on the crossway beam of a balcony that overhung the water. A great tongue of flame shot out at her, but at the instant she raised her joined hands above her head and dived--a flash of white lit up by the red flare--into deep water.
"By heaven, what pluck!" muttered Marmaduke as, without a second"s delay, he plunged from the wharf and swam, with quick overhand strokes, to where the woman had disappeared. He was just preparing to dive after her when she came up close beside him.
One look was sufficient.
"Marmie!" he cried. "G.o.d in heaven, am I dreaming? Marmie!"
"Yes--yes," she gasped impatiently, for owing to the weight she carried her dive had been prolonged. "The child"s head--see that it is out of water!"
In a second he was cool, self-reliant.
"Your hands on my shoulders, please. That will raise you--I must swim round--the burning wood."
In truth every instant a fierce hiss, a cloud of steam close to them showed where some blazing fragment had fallen to be extinguished.
"Are you all right?" he called over his shoulder, as with powerful strokes he made for a further wharf.
"All right; but please be quick--the child----"
How like Marmie--always the child--the child. He swam on, feeling bewildered but, he knew not why, desperately happy.
"I don"t understand," he began, when at last they stood dripping side by side, and the baby, being unloosed from its wrappings, was found to be none the worse.
"I will tell you directly," she said. "I must just give the child back to its mother; it is quite a tiny thing. Then you can walk up to my house over yonder and get your clothes dried."