The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-07-12

to her nearest neighbor, when she found
herself fOrestalled by heavy, sitting cloud
of smoke, which rolled suddenly through
the church and reused every creature pres
was rustic and q stir, and then they all
stood up, men and women and little
children, gazing with wild eyes and
whitened faces on each other, uncertain Il
the " how or from whence' of the threat
ened peril.
The priest alone seemed to nav no atten-
ton to the circumstance; nevertheless he
felt and cOmprehended far better than they
did the nature of the fate awaiting them,
and hurried on to the conclusion of the
mass which was by this time, fortunately,
well nigh over.
He had hardly finished the communion
prayer before the heat and suffocation had
become unbearable. In an agony of terror
the people made a rush to the gates, and
tore down the screen of mating which Sc
parated the church from the porch beyond.
the church from floor to ceilipg-the cry Of
human beings caught in a snare from
whence, except by a cruel death, there was
no escaping. The porch was already q
blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof,
with fagots burning in all the fury that
pitch and tar, and other combustibles flung
literally among them, were calculated to
produce. These, then, were the sounds
which had disturbed Nellie during mass.
The enemy had profited by the rapt de-
votion of these poor people to build up, un
heard and unsupported, their death pile in
the porch, after which doughty deed they
had retired, closing the gates behind them,
and trusting the rest to the terrible nature
of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.
To attempt q passage through that sea of
fire in it's first wild fury would have been
instant death and amid the cries of women
and children, many of whom were we'll
Mich frnmnlo6 fO Aoafh honooth t1,o Eoot0 Of
their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed
backward.
Then came another horror An un-
happy girl, one of the foremost of the
throng, in her eagerness to escape, had
rushed SO far into the porch that her gar
fear, she flung herself face downward upon
q heap of driftwood near her. 1t was all
that was needed to complete the work of
destruction. The wood, dry and combus-
tible as finder, ignited instantly, and in two
minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain
some of the men, with the priest at their
head, leaped on it with a wild effort to
trample it out before it could spread further.
AS fast as it was stifled in one place it broke
out in another, the subtle element gliding
along the walls and selling upon stack after
stack of wood with an ease and speed that
Knocked at all their efforts to extinguish it.
No words can paint the horrors of the
scene that followed! Heavy volumes of
black smoke, ever and anon rolling upward
from some new spot upon which the fire had
at times shut out the light Of day,
and made the darkness almost palpable to
the senses. Fire, bright and angry, flash
ing at first here and there at intervals, like
forked lightning, through the gloom then
coming thicker and quicker, as it grew with
what it fed on, hurrying and leapng in its
with hungry tongues all that opposed its
spreading itself in sheets of
molten flame, now contracting into red,
Missing streams, bearing a terrible resem-
blance to fiery serpents, but never for
slackening in its work of woe
and fastening with all the malice and tena-
city of a conscious creature upon every
thing cOmbustible within its reach, until
the very rafters overhead were wreathed in
hame-and underneath that awful canopy
the painting, shrieking crowd, struggling in
that sulphurOus atmosphere of smoke and
fire, rushing backward and forward, they
knew not whittier, in search of a safety
they knew too well they could never find
for even while obeying the animal instinct
to fly from danger, there was not a creature
there who did not feel to the very inmost
marrow of his being, that unless miracle
were interposed to save him, he was doomed
then and there to die.
Nellie was the only person in the church,
perhaps, with the sole exception of the pas
tor, who made no vain effort at escaping.
Driven by the swaying of the others, after
their first rush to the door, backward
toward the altar, she had remained there
quietly ever since, praying or trying to
pray, and shutting eyes and ears as much
rs might be to the terrible sights and
sounds around her. Accident had, in fact.
brought her to the only spot in the build
ing where safety was for the moment feas-
ible.
The altar was built, as we have already
said, of stone, and being placed at some
distance from any of the walls, the space
in front, though sitting from heat and
smoke, was clear of fire, and consequently ;
Of immediate danger. - -
Hither, therefore, the priest, who, having {
lone all that man could do toward the ;
II tiinn of fIa fnlt tlint