ON FIRE!

Otago Witness, Issue 653, 4 June 1864, Page 18

ON FIRE!

[From All thb Year Roujtd.J

The recent terrible catastrophe in Santiago reeals vividly to my mind one of the most extraordinary adventures of my chequered life. Five and-twenty years ago, I was captain of he Northern Light, a large schooner trading ietween Hull and St. Petersburg. A long ac- 1 quaintance with the vicissitudes of the Russian climate had made me somewhat reckless. The ewosequence was, that one 30th of Oc'ober I «und ray vessel tight locked in ice. I had stayed a week too long, in my eagerness to take a full cargo of timber, and I was justly punished for my temerity:' a prisoner till the middle or end of April, lar-away from my friends, and doing what ft iivery-stabfe-keeper would call "eating my own head off."

Being, however, of a sanguine temperament, and having no wife at home to be anxious about, I resolved to make the best of it, and enjoy myself as well as I could. I saw all the sights of St. Petersburg, from Peter the Great's wooden house down to the Mammoth. T .visited Moscow. J went bear-hunting. I drove about in sledges. I feH in love and fell out again. Nor did I neglect buanoß. I frequently attended the Exchange,

and made myself known to the chief tallow, hemp, and timber merchants. I studied Russian commerce. I arranged for cargoes for two years to come. The Ando-Rusuans are very hospitable, and, thanks to the kindness of Mr Anderson, the English bnnker, my hotel expenses were very smSl. My fur coats were ray chief expense ; they cost me a large sum then : but I reckoned that they would last me my life, and so they have— at least, I wear them to this day. Nevertheless, I pined for the hour of liberty. An idle life did not suit a man of my temperament—one who had betn at sea ever since he was twelve years old. Like all sailors. I was always grumbling against the sea, and yet I was never happy away from it. At last the order of ray release came. The ice on the Neva, opposite the Custom-house especially, began to melt into thin bars an inch or so wide. It became dangerous to venture on it, except where it was piled with snow. The ice-slabs on the quay began to break, ! when I pushed them with my stick, into glassy fragments. Here and there some spaces began to open, and dirty brown snow water pooled on the surface. There had been several warm days, but \ now rain and wind came, and they soon melted the walls of my crystal prison. Sledges still ventured on the Neva, though the waser rose up to the horses' kness. One morniug, v-hen I looked out of my window on the ground floor at Miss Benson's, on the English quay, the water had all gone from the surface of the ice ; that was the well-known sign that the ice had become too porous and spongy to hold water, and in a few hours would break away from the banks and begin to float seaward. I had just sat down to breakfast, when a thunder peal of cannon broke from the fortress. " What is that, Miss Benson!" I said to our hostess at the head of the table.

" That." she replied, "is the signal that the commander of thecitidal, with his officers, is crossing the river, to present the Emperor at the Winter Palace with a goblet of Neva water in token of the return oi sprmg'. The Emperor will give him the cup back nlled with ducats." " Hurrah !" I cried ; " then hey for old England !"

It took me some days to get the ship off, for it was tedious going backwards and forwards to Cronstndt. It was the Butter week time : that seven days' feast which precedes Lent, and is followed by the rejoicing of Easter. In the intervals of business, as 1 went to and fro to my agent's, I amused myself with observing the revelry of this great Russian festival. There were thousands of peasants devouring blinni (pancakes), and caviare, honey-cakes, aud nuts. There were swings, see-saws, and roundabouts. The apreat aquare of the Admiralty was the chief scene of the amusements. Close to the Winter Palace, the War-office, and the SenateHouse, there ware scores of temporary theatres, and long lines of ice mountains, down which the sledges kept rushing incessantly, amid the shouts of laughter of the good-natured but wild-looking peasants. At the doors of the theatres stood the tea-sellers, with huge brnzen lemovars smoking in the centre of their tables, and Burrounded by couutlsss teapots. The shopkeepers themselves, in fur caps and gloves, stood by their stalls, stamping, and clapping- their hands, and ahauting: • " Gentlemen, will you please to take a glass of warm tea, with lemon or cream? How will you take the Bugar ?" (for a true Russian keeps his sugar in his mouth, and does not put it into his teacup). Ths Admiralty square was 9trewn with nut-shells ; here and there a drunken bear of a peasant, a mere reeling bundle of sheepskin, jostled ngainst me, and then, with the simple-hearted politeness of his race, took off his hat and hiccuped out: "Pardon me, my little father, but remember it is Butter week."

One day I sallied out into the great square about noon to see the grandees of the capital drive through the fair, and I never saw such a sight. The line was guarded by mounted gendarmes, dressed like lancers, aud wearing light blue uniforms with brown epaulettes. There were Chinese, Turks, Tartars, Germans, Englishmen, Russian princes, priests, soldiers, bearded moichants and their portly wive 3, Circassian officers, colonels of the body-«uard in their eaglecrowned helmets, and serft, ia a long procession of carriages, which, beginning at the rock on which Peter the Great's statue stands, reached to the base of the great granite column of Alexander, facing the enormous pile of the Winter Palace. Tired at last of the procession, I turned aside to one of the largest of the wooden theatres. A clash of music from within announced the commencement of a new performance ; Joining the torrent of people, old and young, rich and poor, who were jostling for admittance, I at last made my way to the pay-place, where a mob of clamsrous ■oujiks were thrusting out their hands with the admittance-money, in childish impatience. I drew back to make way for a respectable old grey-bearded merchant and his pretty daughter, who, muffed up in a cloak trimmed with the fur of the silver fox, clung to his arm, and shrank back from the rough gesticulating crowd. I thought I had never seen so charming a girl, so tender in manner, so gentle and spring-like in beauty. Th« merchant and his daughter bowed and thanked me in broken English for my politeness, paid their money, and passed in. I followed rapidly, but a crowd of peasants thrust th«mselves in before me, so that when I took my seat I could obtain no glimpse of the merchant or his pretty daughter. The wooden theatre of the Katsheli was an enormous building, built, as a peasant next me said, to hold five thousanl persons. It had large gallerie3, balconies, and Corinthian pillars, hung with cheap drapery, and gay with red and blue paint. A vast cnandelier lighted up the tentlike interior.

The theatre wa? already full when I entered, 9<» that I had to content myself with a back seat in an upper box, not far from the head of one of the staircases — as I soon found by the keen-edged iced draught. I amused myself, while the overture was playing, with the motley view befo c me. The Tartar faces, only partially reclaimed from barbarism, were worth studying, now that they beamed with fun. The little oblique eyes glistened with enjoyment, the great bearded-dan-gled heads rolled about in ecstasy. Here and there, j the eye fell on a Polish or Circassian face, with large jfine eyes, and almost a Greek contour. Every now and then a group of grave portly merchants in furred caftans and boots, mingled with the serfs, but with an obtrusive reserve that showed they did so under protest. Their children, also dressed in craftans and boats, were exactly like themselves all but the beards. Nor was there any lack of women ©f the lower orders : rough, honest, Irish-looking women, few of them in bonnets, most of them with their heads bound round with colored handkerchiefs. , Id d not listen much to the music jit was that

brazen mechanical sort of music, without color or life, that no one listens to. By-and-by, it ended with a jolting crash. There was a moment's pause, and the curtain drew up. A deep hush passed over the troubled waves of the pit. The children clutched their fathers' hand 3, the soldiers ceased their practical jokes, the country-women paused in their gossip, the boys stopped eating, every eye turned to the stage. An honest old woman just before me — a housekeeper, as I judged by her dress— amused me esf>ecially by her child like eagerness. She put en ler spectacle*!, and leaned forward with both hands on her knees, to diink in every word. The play was a little operetta, half French, half Italian. I think they called it " Hose and Lubin." It was a gay, trifling thing. The hero and heroine were villagers, and an did cross father, and a malicious fool, were the constant interrupters of their stolen meeting. Rose was dressed in a little tucked up gown of white silk striped with pink, and wore a gipsy hat; Lubin wore a nondescript sort of blue silk coat and flapped waistcoat, while the Zany tumbled into a thousand scrapes in a sort of miller's dresg all white, and a blue broad-brimmed hat. There was a good deal of hiding and searching aliout with soldiers, until the true lover enlists, and finally returns a General, to marry Rose. It was a flimsy pretty hit of nonsense, mixed up with dances' and songs, and now and then a chorus ; and it was all over in half an hour.

Silly as it was, it pleased the audience, who shouted, laughed, and encored everything. A display of fireworks was to follow, and then a short farce.

Between the acts, I tried the little Russian I knew, and asked the old woman, who had turned round and offered me some honey-cakes. " How she liked it?"

"My little fa'her,'' she said, quite seriously, "it is the most wonderful thing I have ever beheld since I saw those accursed French act at Moscow, in Napoleon's time." Suddenly all the clatter and laughter died away. The curtain had not risen, but a faint crimson light was shining behind it. It was the commencement of the pyrotechnic display, and I was curious to see what the Ruisians could do in these matters. The first scene was to be the illumination of the Kremlin at the coronation af the Emperor Alexander the First. Probably that was only the preparation, for, though the red light widened and glowed, the curtain, strangely enough, did not rise.

The people stamped and shouted. All at once the bajozzo (the clown), in his white dress, ran forward, pale as death, nis eyes staring, his hands tossing about like those of a madman. "We are on fire!" he shouted. "Save yourselves, you who can." " Bravo, Ferrari !" cried the peasants, with roars of laughter. "Excellent! Viva Ferrari! Bravo, Ferrari!" The clown fl d from the stage, as it seemed, in an agony of feigned fear. The laughter redoubled. A man in evening dress rushed forward, wlriV peredta the orchestra, and waved his hand to some men who were not visible to the audience.

The curtain rose swiftly at that ominous signal, and disclosed, to my horror, a rolling mass of fire and crimsoned smoke. Already the flies had caupht fire and were hanging in blazing streamers. Fire rose frem below, fire gleamed from above, fire darted its quick tongues from either side. The theatre was on fire. The bajozzo had not been feigning, but was terribly in earnest.

I shall never forget the scream that bu*s>t from those four thousand people when the reality broke upon them. I had only an instant to look, but in that instant I saw row after row white faces turn as by one impulse to the door. Then, came a stamping rush as of a herd of maddened animals. Many tore forward without a thought but of their awn safety, others snatched up their children, others dragged ionvard their old mothers or fathers, or bore their wives or sweethearta in their arms. Then came the grapple for life, the trampling suffocating battle lor existence that only served to hasten on death. In many things I am coward enough, but iv sudden danger I have always found myself cool and collected. Perhap3 a sailor's frequent hazards, and the constant thought of the possibility of death, is a sort of training ; \ erhaps it is a constitutional quality. I know not how it is. I only state the fact! I saw immediately that though for the moment safe, and far from the full torrent of the struggle, my hope* of escape were quite as desperate as the hopes of those who were trampling each other to death at the entrance below. Unfortunately, one of the great foldingdoora opened inward. In the first rush it had been closed, and now the pressure was so great it could not be moved one way or other. The flames were spreading rapidly, the smoke rolled towards us in blinding clouas,> and from those clouds darted and leaped serpent tonjjues of fire. The flames seemed with cruel greediness to spring from seat to seat. The slips were blazing, the orchestra was a seething pit of fire. The screams and groans on all sides were heartbreaking. I hesitated for a moment whether to remain where I was and meet death, or to breast the h"man whirlpool below. Atthat moment a surge of flame ran along the ledge of the next box to me, blackening and blistering as it went. The heat grew intense. I determined to make one struggle for my life. I ian to the head of the stairs and laoked down. There, the herd of screaming shouting- people fought with hands and I feet in a horrible tangle of life and death. I gave myse f up as lost, when a hand seized my coat. It was the old housekeeper, screaming her entreaties to me to save her. I told her to cling to me and I would do what I could. It gave me courage to think I was struggling for some one besides myself. She kneeled and prayed to God for us bath. I had placed myself at the edge of the crowd in order to nusband my strength for a last effort. 1 One thing I determined, and that was that I would not save myself by treading poor women and children under foot. Rather than that, I would let the fire burn me slowly, or I would recommend my soul to God, throw myself into the crater »>ehind me, and sc die quickly. One agonising thought alone shot through my heart, and that was a thought for the tender girl I had seen so innocent and happy half an hour before. Suddenly, as I stood there like a diver hesitating before he plunges, a peasant, scorcned and burnt, dashed past me from the crowd that had trampled upon him, and staggering forward, halfstifled with smoke, fell downward dead at my feet. His axe, as usual with the peasants, was thrust in his belt behind. A thought of selfpreservation, surely sent straight from Heaven, flashed through my brain. I stooped and drew out the axe. " Make way there, or I cut down the first

man who stops me !" I cried out, in broken Hunan.

I half fou»ht, half persuaded, a few to give - way, until I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had the bare planlc wall of the outer enclosure of the theatre before me.

" I will save you all," I cried, "if you will let me free my arm." The old woman still clung to me. but as I advanced to strike my first blow at the plank partition that arose between life and death, there came a rush which for a moment separated us. I had no time or room to turn, but next moment I felt her grasp still firmer and closer.

One blow, and the splinters flew; a second ' blow, a plank gave; a third blow, and the blessed daylight poured in on us ; a fourth blow, and a chasm yawned, wide enough for the passage of myself and my chiirge. After us, hundreds - passed out rapidly. I found myself among a crowd of shriekingwomen, who were ca'ling on an officer standing - in a barouche drawn by six horses, to save their husbands, sons, brothers. Suddenly a man with a scorched beard, his eyes streaming with tears came and took from me the woman I had saved* I was so blinded with smoke and fevered witlt excitement, that I had scarcely given her a thought. All I knew was, that I had saved anold woman, and, by God's grace, opened a door of escape for some hundreds of otherwise doomed creatures.

When I looked round, I found the merchant whom I had before seen (lie was the scorched and weeping man), shedding tears of joy over a beau- ■ tiful girl who had fainted. The old woman had been divided from me in the tumult. The merchant's daughter it was who had then clasped me —it was her whom I had saved. Beautiful she looked as I bent over her and received her father's blessings. The tall officer was the emperor. "My children," he kept saying to the mob, " I will save all I can ! Bring that brave man to me." I am not ashamed to repeat those words, although I did not deserve them. " Englishman," he said to me in French, " th« Russian nation owes you a debt of gratitude; it is for me t» repay it; come to me to-morrow at the palace." I bowed my thanks, and handed my card toon© of the emperor's staff. When the fire was subdued, and they began todig for the bodies, the scene was agonising. Heaps of charred and trampled corpses lay under • the smoking 1 beams— some stifled, others trodden or beaten to death. Some were charred, others • half roasted, many only burnt in the chest and head, the holiday clothes still bright and gay. In the galleries, women were foumd suffocated and leaning over the front boxes. In one passagethey discovered a crowd «f dead, all erect, likes* • many shadows marshalled from the other worid. More than a hundred were found still alive, but dangerously burnt. Most of these afterward* died in the hospitals. One little boy was discovered cowering unhurt under a bench; he had crept there when theburning; roof began to break up and drop amongthe struggling multitude. The beams and dead bodies had so fallen as to form a shelter over h» head, and there he had remained till we disinterred him.

The official returns set down the number o t the dead as three hundred ; but my agent told me that while he himself stood there, he counted fifty waggons pass, each laden with fiom ten to> fifteen corpses ; and many people made a much higher estimate. I need not say milch about my visit to the palace ; suffice it to mention that the emperor rewarded me with an order that I highly prize On the same day the priests offered up publicprayers for the souls of the sufierers, on the sit* of the burnt theatre. It was a solemn spectacle ' and as I r.ise from those prayers, full of gratitude to God for my deliverance, a rough hand grasped mine. „ r 1 It was' the merchant whose daughter I had! saved. Tears streamed from his eyes as he embraced me and kissed my forehead and my cheek m the Oriental manner of hi* nation "My little father," he said, "I would rather have found thee tfinn have cleared a thousand red rouble notes. Little Catherine, whom you, saved, has been praying for you ever since Come, you must dine with us. I will take nou denial, for do I not owe you more than my life ? Come, a droshky there— quick to the Fontanka * Catherine will leap for joy when she sees you." That visit was an eventful «ne to me, for on my third voyage from that date I married CatherineMaslovitch, and n loving and devoted wife I found her. She is kissing my cheek as I pen these words.

But it is not to dwell upon my own personal good fortune and happiness, that I have written this plain remembrance. It is, that I may do--what little I can to impress upon those who mayread it, that a rush from any building on fire b certain to be fatal and that" an orderly departure from it is certnm deliverance. The Theatre,.. Concert-room, Church or Chapel, does not exist, through which n fire could spread so rapidly as to prevent the whole assembly from eoing o»t unscathed, if they would go free from panic. The bantiago case was an extremely exceptional oneIhe whole of she gaudy dap-traps were under the management of priests (the worst managers on earth), and what kind of priests they were, may be inferred from the feet that the base cowards all ' precipitately fled, and tHat not one of them- had the manhood to stand at the Altar, his place of " authority, where he could be seen on a platform, made to render him conspicuous, and whence hi» directions would have been issued at an immense advantage. A«ain, the assemblage was mainly composed of women and children & light inflammable dresses. Again, the Show was lishted by> lamps ©fparaffine dangling by strings from the whole of the roof above the people's heads, which" dropped upon them, so many overturned pots of ' liquid fire, as the strings were burnt. But evenunder these specially disastrous conditions, great numbers of the assemblage would have been saved but for the mad rush at the door which instantly closed it. Suppose that rush not to have beenmade, suppose the door wide open, suppose a. priest with the soul of a man in him to have stood on the Altar steps, passing the. people at that end of the church, out of the Priestly door (of which we hear nothing, and which the last of those i quick fugitives perhaps shut after him\, and how changed the result ! I entreat any one who may read this experience of mine, and may afterwardr be m a similar condition, to remember that in mycase, and in the Santiago case, numbers lost their lives— nottecatue the building was on fire,,, but because th're icas a desperate rush at the door. Haifa dozea man capable of self-control, might save as .many thousand lives, by urgingthis on a crowd at the critical moment, ana br. saying " We will go the last,"