[Illustration: CLAUDE BURROUGHS. H. S. MURDOCH.]
At about three o'clock in the morning the fire had been nearly extinguished, and the major part of the throng of sight-seers had gone to their homes, ignorant of the fatal consequences of the conflagration.
The flames had subsided sufficiently to permit the firemen to make an investigation near the main entrance of the theatre. Chief Nevins passed over the trembling floor of the hallway toward the inner doorway. Inside the doors the flooring had fallen in, leaving a deep pit of fire and flame, from which a dense smoke and steam ascended. Here a sickening spectacle met his horrified gaze. Close up to the flaming furnace, and clinging to the splintered verge of the demolished flooring, was the body of a woman. Her hands clasped the frame-work of the door in a desperate grasp. She had fought hard for life. Evidently she would have escaped had not the flooring given way beneath her. All the clothing was burnt off, and the features were so blackened that she was unrecognizable, and the body was removed to the Morgue.
At 4 o'clock in the morning the flames were put out, and the heap of debris was black and cold. From the vestibule platform the firemen saw a most horrible spectacle. The mound that had at first appeared to be simply a heap of ashes proved to be almost wholly composed of human bodies. Heads, arms, legs, shoulders, shoes, and here and there entire human remains protruded through the surface of the mound. Policemen and firemen hesitated for a moment before leaping down upon the sickening heap. An inclined plane of plain deal boards was hastily constructed to reach from the tender vestibule platform to the pit, and upon this a ladder was rested. Upon the ladder the men went to and fro. Upon the plane, coffins were hauled up and down. At first the firemen lifted the bodies from the debris, after having carefully dug around them and loosened them, and ten minutes was consumed in exhuming each body. But as it became apparent that there were scores and scores of human remains, and that a day, and perhaps a night, would end before the last corpse was taken out, less tender means were used in the operation, and the work assumed a more earnest and energetic character. Instead of five men, ten men set at work among the ruins, while on the vestibule platform a dozen sturdy firemen manned the short ropes by which the coffins, laden with human remains, were drawn up and dragged to the sidewalk. All the bodies were bent into horrid shapes, assumed in the struggles of death by suffocation and by burning. Nine out of ten of the corpses had an arm upraised and bent to shield the face. Something was missing from every one. This one lacked a head or a foot, this a nose, an ear, or a hand, another its fingers or the crown of the skull. Very many broken limbs and protruding bones were found, and there were gashes in the upturned faces or fractures in the smooth-burned skulls, so that each corpse as it was dragged into the light was a new revelation of ghastliness. A few lusty pulls disengaged each body. Two or three men seized its stiffened limbs and pressed them into a coffin, a pair of sharp-pointed tongs clutched the coffin, and the firemen overhead dragged it even with the street, where a cloth was thrown over the coffin, and it was dragged to the dead-wagons, which kept coming and going all day long.