Near the pansy bed a woman lay. She screamed piercingly at intervals.
Frank learned that she was in travail. By and by a doctor came, a nurse.
They were putting up tents on the green sward. Automobiles rolled up,
sounding their siren alarms. Out of them were carried bandaged men who
moaned, silent forms on litters, more screaming women. They were taken
to the tents. Extra police appeared to control the crowds that surged
hither and thither without seeming reason, swayed by sudden curiosities
and trepidation.
San Francisco was burning. The water mains were broken by the quake,
Frank learned. The fire department was demoralized. Chief Sullivan was
dead. A falling chimney from the California Hotel had crushed him.
There were emergency reservoirs, but no one seemed to know where. They
had not been used for years.
Swiftly the fire gained. It ravaged like a fiend in the factory district
south and east, toward the bay.
By noon a huge smoke curtain hid the sky; through it the sun gleamed
palely like a blood-red disc. Wild rumors were in circulation. Los
Angeles was wiped out. St. Louis had been destroyed. New York and
Chicago were inundated by gigantic tidal waves.
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