Up the street; there were showers of sparks,
the window-panes on both sides were aglow, the factory was burning,
the councilor's house was burning and the house next door also. There
was nothing but smoke, fire and confusion, cries, curses, tiles that
rattled down, blows of axes, wood that splintered, window-panes that
jingled, jets of water that hissed, spluttered, and splashed, and amid
all this the regular dull sob-like throb of the engines. Furniture,
bedding, black helmets, ladders, shining buttons, illuminated faces,
wheels, ropes, tarpaulin, strange instruments; Mogens rushed into
their midst, over, under it all, forward to the house.
The facade was brightly illuminated by the flames from the burning
factory, smoke issued from between the tiles of the roof and rolled
out of the open windows of the first story. Within the fire rumbled
and crackled. There was a slow groaning sound, that turned into a
rolling and crashing, and ended in a dull boom. Smoke, sparks, and
flames issued in torment out of all the openings of the house. And
then the flames began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and
redoubled clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the
first floor that fell. Mogens with both hands seized a large
scaling-ladder which leaned against the part of the factory which was
not yet in flames. For a moment he held it vertically, but then it
slipped away from him and fell over toward the councilor's house where
it broke in a window-frame on the second story.
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