these heated enthusiasts for a space, and then returned to the window.

And indeed the spectacle was well worth looking at. The dusk was

falling, and the flames were showing brilliantly at half a dozen

points. The Royal Fishbourne Hotel Tap, which adjoined Mr. Polly to

the west, was being kept wet by the enthusiastic efforts of a string

of volunteers with buckets of water, and above at a bathroom window

the little German waiter was busy with the garden hose. But Mr.

Polly's establishment looked more like a house afire than most houses

on fire contrive to look from start to finish. Every window showed

eager flickering flames, and flames like serpents' tongues were

licking out of three large holes in the roof, which was already

beginning to fall in. Behind, larger and abundantly spark-shot gusts

of fire rose from the fodder that was now getting alight in the Royal

Fishbourne Hotel stables. Next door to Mr. Polly, Mr. Rumbold's house

was disgorging black smoke from the gratings that protected its

underground windows, and smoke and occasional shivers of flame were

also coming out of its first-floor windows. The fire station was

better alight at the back than in front, and its woodwork burnt pretty

briskly with peculiar greenish flickerings, and a pungent flavour. In

the street an inaggressively disorderly crowd clambered over the

rescued fire escape and resisted the attempts of the three local

constables to get it away from the danger of Mr. Polly's tottering

façade, a cluster of busy forms danced and shouted and advised on the

noisy and smashing attempt to cut off Mantell and Throbson's from the

fire station that was still in ineffectual progress. Further a number

236

The History of Mr Polly