All these and other details are elaborated upon elsewhere, together with the touching story of the scores of young women employed in the production, "Mr. Bluebeard," who would have been stranded penniless in a strange city a thousand miles from home but for the prompt and noble relief afforded by Mrs. Ogden Armour.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST AID TO THE INJURED AND CARE FOR THE DEAD
On the heels of the firemen came the police, intent on the work of rescue. Chief O'Neill and Assistant Chief Schuettler ordered captains from a dozen stations to bring their men, and then they rushed to the theater and led the police up the stairs to the landing outside the east entrance to the first balcony.
The firemen, rushing blindly up the stairs in the dense pall of smoke, had found their path suddenly blocked by a wall of dead eight or ten feet high. They discovered many persons alive and carried them to safety. Other firemen crawled over the mass of dead and dragged their hose into the theater to fight back the flames that seemed to be crawling nearer to turn the fatal landing into a funeral pyre.
O'Neill and Schuettler immediately began carrying the dead from the balcony, while other policemen went to the gallery to begin the work there.
In the great mass of dead at the entrance to the first balcony the bodies were so terribly interwoven that it was impossible at first to take any one out.
"Look out for the living!" shouted the chief to his men. "Try to find those who are alive."
From somewhere came a faint moaning cry.
"Some one alive there, boys," came the cry. "Lively, now!"
The firemen and police long struggled in vain to move the bodies.
The raging tide of humanity pouring out of the east entrance of the balcony during the panic had met the fighting, struggling crowd coming down the stairs from the third balcony at right angles. The two streams formed a whirlpool which ceased its onward progress and remained there on the landing where people stamped each other under foot in that mad circle of death.
In a short time the blockade in the fatal angle must have been complete. Then into this awful heap still plunged the contrary tides of humanity from each direction. Many tried to crawl over the top of the heap, but were drawn down to the grinding mill of death underneath. The smoke was heavy at the fatal angle, for the majority of those taken out at that point bore no marks of bruises.
Many, and especially the children, were trampled to death, but others were held as in a vise until the smoke had choked the life from their bodies.
It was toward this that the firemen directed O'Neill and Schuettler as they rushed into the theater. The smoke was still heavy and the great gilded marble foyer of the "handsomest theater in America" was somber and dark and still as a tomb, except for the whistling of the engines outside and now and then the shouting of the firemen. Water was dripping everywhere and stood inches deep on the floor and stairs.
Two flickering lanterns shed the only light by which the policemen worked, and this very fact, perhaps, made their task more horrible and gruesome, if such a thing were possible.
All through the gallery the bodies were found. Some were those of persons who had decided to stay in their seats and not to join in the mad rush for the doors and run the risk of being trampled to death. Many of them no doubt had trusted to the cries, "There is no danger; keep your seats!"
They had stuck to their seats until, choked by the heavy smoke, they had been unable to move.
Some bodies were in a sitting position, while others had fallen forward, with the head resting on the seat in front, as though in prayer. Almost all were terribly burned.
In the aisles lay women and children who had staid in their seats until they finally were convinced that the danger was real. Then they had attempted to get to the door.
The smoke was so heavy the firemen worked with difficulty, but finally it cleared and workmen who were hastily sent by the Edison company equipped forty arc lights, which shone bravely through the smoke. With this help the firemen searched to better effect, and found bodies that in the blackness they had missed.
"Give that girl to some one else and get back there," shouted Chief Musham to a fireman. The fireman never answered but kept on with his burden.
"Hand that girl to some one else," shouted the battalion chief.
The fireman looked up. Even in the flickering light of the lantern the chief carried one could see the tears coming from the red eyes and falling down the man's blackened cheeks.
"Chief," said the fireman, "I've got a girl like this at home. I want to carry this one out."
"Go ahead," said the chief. The little group working at the head of the stairs broke apart while the fireman, holding the body tightly, made his way slowly down the stairs.
One by one the dead were taken from the pile in the angle. The majority of them were women. On some faces was an expression of terrible agony, but on others was a look of calmness and serenity, and firemen sometimes found it hard to believe they were dead. Three firemen carried the body of a young woman down the stairs in a rubber blanket. She appeared alive. Her hands were clasped and held flowers. Her eyes were closed and she seemed almost to smile. She looked as though she was asleep, but it was the sleep of death.
In the dark and smoke, with the dripping water and the dead piled in heaps everywhere, the Iroquois theater had been turned into a tomb by the time the rescue parties had begun their work.
The moan that the frantic workers heard as they struggled to untangle the mass of bodies gave the police hope that many in the heap might be alive.
"We can't do it, chief," shouted one of the policemen. "We can't untangle them."
"We must take these bodies out of the way to get down to those who are alive," replied the chief. "This man here is dead; lay hold, now, boys, and pull him out."
Two big firemen caught the body by the shoulders and struggled and pulled until they had it free. Then another body was taken out, and then again the workers seemed unable to unloose the dead. Again came that terrible moan through the mass.
"For God's sake, get down to that one who's alive," implored O'Neill, almost in despair.
The policemen pulled off their heavy overcoats and worked frantically at the heap. Often a body could not be moved except when the firemen and police dragged with a "yo, heave," like sailors hauling on a rope. As fast as the bodies were freed one policeman, or sometimes two or three, would stagger down the stairs with their burdens.
Over the heap of bodies crawled a fireman carrying something in his arms.
"Out of the way, men, let me out! The kid's alive."
The workers fell back and the fireman crawled over the heap and was helped out. He ran down the stairs three steps at a time to get the child to a place where help might be given before it was too late. Then other firemen from inside the theater passed out more bodies, which were handed from one policeman to another until some on the outside of the heap could take the dead and carry them downstairs.
Suddenly a policeman pulling at the heap gave a shout.
"I've got her, chief!" he said. "She's alive, all right!"
"Easy there, men, easy," cried Schuettler; "but hurry and get that woman to a doctor!"
A girl, apparently 18 years old, was moaning faintly. The policeman released her from the tangled heap, and a big fireman, lifting her tenderly in his arms, hurried with her to the outside of the building.
"There must be more alive," said the chief. "Work hard, boys."
There was