The Witness

ear stirred through the
house. The smell of smoke swept in from a sudden open door. The actors
paused, grew white, and swerved in their places; then one by one fled
out of the scene. The audience arose and turned to panic, even as a
flame swept up and licked the very curtain while it fell.

All was confusion!

The football team, trained to meet emergencies, forgot their cruel play
and scattered, over seats and railing, everywhere, to fire-escapes and
doorways, taking command of wild, stampeding people, showing their
training and their courage.

Stephen, thus suddenly set free, glanced about him, and saw a few feet
away an open door, felt the fresh breeze of evening upon his hot
forehead, and knew the upper back fire-escape was close at hand. By some
strange whim of a panic-maddened crowd but few had discovered this exit,
high above the seats in the balcony; for all had rushed below and were
struggling in a wild, frantic mass, trampling one another underfoot in a
mad struggle to reach the doorways. The flames were sweeping over the
platform now, licking out into the very pit of the theater, and people
were terrified. Stephen saw in an instant that the upper door, being
farthest away from the center of the fire, was the place of greatest
safety. With one frantic leap he gained the aisle, strode up to the
doorway, glanced out into the night to take in the situation; cool,
calm, quiet, with the still stars overhead, down below the open iron
stairway of the fire-escape, and a darkened street with people like tiny
puppets moving on their way. Then turning back, he tore off the
grotesque coat and vest, the confining collar, and threw them from him.
He plunged down the steps of the aisle to the railing of the gallery,
and, leaning there in his shirt-sleeves and the queer striped trousers,
he put his hands like a megaphone about his lips and shouted:

"Look up! Look up! There is a way to escape up here! Look up!"

Some poor struggling ones heard him and looked up. A little girl was
held

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

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