Hawaii - James Michener [400]
"No," she said quietly, "it is the plague."
"No plague!" the furious Chinese cried. "Your husband own my store. He say all time, 'More rent! More rent!' I not pay so he decide to burn."
"No," Mrs. Janders argued reasonably. "Mr. Apaka, it is the plague. Believe me, it would not otherwise be done." But the Chinese knew better, and through the long night of January 19 they watched the mysterious lights of the city and waited in bitterness for the fires to begin.
Fortunately, the twentieth was a calm day with no wind that might have agitated the planned blaze. At eight in the morning the firemen, according to a schedule worked out to provide maximum protection for the rest of the city, poured liberal amounts of kerosene over a small shack diagonally across from where the Whipple mansion, burned earlier, had stood. The shack certainly merited destruction, for it had already caused the deaths of five plague victims and the illness of three others. At eight-ten a match was applied to the kerosene, and the filthy hovel exploded in flame.
As it blazed, a slight breeze started blowing from the northeast. It crept down from the mountains and as it funneled into the valleys that led into Honolulu it increased in speed, so that by the time it reached the flaming shack it was prepared to blow the sparks in exactly the opposite direction from that intended by the Fire Department. Within three minutes half a dozen shacks not on the list were ablaze, but they were easily evacuated and were of little value, so the fire fighters simply surrounded them and beat out any sparks that might escape toward the center of the city where property was of real value.
Then at eight-thirty the capricious wind blowing down from the hills arrived in an unpredicted gust and whipped a flurry of sparks high into the air. Fortunately, the land across from the fire had already been razed, so there was no danger of spreading the flames in that direction, but the wind seemed sent from hell, for it suddenly veered and deposited many active sparks on the large Congregational church that had been completed in 1884 directly across from where the old Whipple mansion had stood. The church had two soaring steeples, for the king had reasoned: "A man has two eyes so he can see better and two ears so he can hear better. My church has got to have two steeples so it can find God better." Now the steeples were in peril, and firemen noted that if any of the embers flamed to life on those tall spires, the rising wind would surely whip sparks clear across the areas previously burned and throw them down into the valuable center of the city, so two brave Hawaiians scrambled up the sides of the church seeking to reach the steeples, and one man arrived in time to stamp out the fires beginning on his, but the other did not, and when he pulled himself onto the upper ledge of his steeple, he found it already ablaze and he barely escaped.
In a few minutes the great tall church became a torch. Its bell plunged to the basement, clanging through the flames. The famous pipe organ, imported from London, melted into lumps of useless metal, and stained-glass windows crashed into the fire. As the church burned furiously in the morning wind, many who had helped build it with their dimes and personal labor gathered to weep. But what was most important was not the loss of the church, but the fact that its unusual height made it a target for every gust that blew down the valley, and even as the people gathered at its foot to mourn, far over their heads the wind was scattering a multitude of sparks. Had the fire occurred at night, the sight would have been one of fairylike splendor, with stars of fire darting across the dark sky; but in an ominous daylight the passage of the flames occasioned no beauty and only dread. For they sped high in the air across the already burned-out areas, a few falling harmlessly on charred land but most flying on into the very heart of the city, where they descended upon dried-wood roofs, there to ignite the fires that were to destroy almost all of Chinatown.