Tales by Polish Authors Part 57

Events meanwhile took their course. One of the workmen noticed that the small door leading to the cotton warehouse was open. Before he could give notice to the foreman, it had been shut again. The workpeople whispered to one another about thieves and Ferdinand's repentant ghost. But the clerks rushed to the office to see what had become of the master-key, and found it gone.

No doubt Adler himself had taken it. But where was he? The porter had seen him pa.s.s through the gateway, but had not noticed him go out again, though he said he had been watching closely for him. Who would undertake to find him in the huge building?

This time the old book-keeper guessed the danger which threatened the factory. He called up the foremen, ordered that watchmen should be set outside the main doors, that the engines should be stopped and the hands withdrawn from the workshop. But before these orders could be carried out the sound of the alarm bell was heard from the warehouses.

Smoke and flames were issuing from the openings. The hands, already demoralized, were seized with panic and left the workrooms in a crowd.

So precipitate was their flight that they forgot to turn out the lights, left all the doors open, and did not stop the engines. But they had only just saved themselves when the fire began to break out in the warehouses containing the manufactured goods.

"What is this? Someone is setting fire to the mill!" they cried.

"It is the boss himself! He is setting fire to it!"

"Where is he?"

"n.o.body knows."

The fire was breaking out in the spinning and weaving departments.

"Surely it is Adler himself who is setting the mill alight!"

"Why should we save it, when he is destroying it?"

"Who tells you to save it?"

"But what are we going to eat to-morrow?"

The shouts of men and the weeping of women and children rose from the dense crowd of hundreds of human beings, powerless in the face of this calamity. Rescue was, indeed, impossible. The people looked on stupefied while the fire spread rapidly.

The gloomy background of a dark autumn night threw into relief the burning buildings, lit by fierce, red flames, which burst from all the openings like torches and played over the crowd gathered in the courtyard below. Of the main building in the shape of a horseshoe, the left wing was on fire in the fourth story, and the right on the ground floor. The workrooms in the middle part of the building were brightly lighted by gas-lamps, so that the power-looms could be seen moving quickly to and fro. The walls of the warehouses had almost disappeared behind a thick veil of smoke and flames. Now the roof of the left wing was ablaze; on the right the fire had reached the first floor, and the flames were bursting from the windows. A continuous murmur, scarcely human, rose from the crowd below.

Suddenly it stopped. All eyes were turned towards the middle building, which was still untouched. On the second floor the shadow of a man was moving backwards and forwards among the looms. Wherever it stopped the room became lighter. The yarn, the wooden frames of the looms, the floors soaked with grease, caught fire with incredible rapidity.

Within a few minutes the second floor was alight, and the shadow moved to the third floor, disappeared, and was seen again on the fourth.

"Look! It is he!" A shout burst from the terrified crowd.

Window-panes were blown out, and the gla.s.s fell clinking on to the pavement; floors collapsed under the heavy machinery. In the midst of the h.e.l.lish noise, the rain of sparks and the clouds of smoke, the shadow of the man on the fourth floor was moving about like an inspector watching workmen. Sometimes it stopped at one of the many windows, and seemed to look out towards the house and the people.

The roof of the left wing broke down with a terrific crash. Sheaves of sparks rose to the sky. Two stories of the cotton warehouse fell in. The air became unbearably hot. Some of the machines began to move with a grinding noise, and finally rolled over. The big wheel of the power-engine, encountering no more resistance, turned with a crazy rapidity, uttering a weird kind of howl. Walls collapsed; the chimney fell, and bits of masonry rolled towards the receding crowd.

From the direction of the gasometer came the dull sound of an explosion. The gas went out; the middle part of the building was fully ablaze; the fire reigned supreme.

Prosperous and full of life an hour ago, the mill was now a raging furnace, in which its owner sought and found his grave....

The wave had returned....

FOOTNOTES:

[24] "Eagle."