nine o'clock
A man working over the _ débris _ from the outside had taken the notion -- it being rather dark just there -- to carry a lantern with him . `` For God 's sake , '' a voice cried from the crowd , `` do n't stay there with that light ! '' But before the words had died upon the air , it was the dreadful fate of the man with the lantern to let it fall , -- and it broke upon the ruined mass . That was at nine o'clock . What there was to see from then till morning could never be told or forgotten . A network twenty feet high , of rods and girders , of beams , pillars , stairways , gearing , roofing , ceiling , walling ; wrecks of looms , shafts , twisters , pulleys , bobbins , mules , locked and interwoven ; wrecks of human creatures wedged in ; a face that you know turned up at you from some pit which twenty-four hours ' hewing could not open ; a voice that you know crying after you from God knows where ; a mass of long , fair hair visible here , a foot there , three fingers of a hand over there ; the snow bright-red under foot ; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about ; strong men carrying covered things by you , at sight of which other strong men have fainted ; the little yellow jet that flared up , and died in smoke , and flared again , leaped out , licked the cotton-bales , tasted the oiled machinery , crunched the netted wood , danced on the heaped-up stone , threw its cruel arms high into the night , roared for joy at helpless firemen , and swallowed wreck , death , and life together out of your sight , -- the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery of tragedy . `` Del , '' said Sene , presently , `` I smell the smoke . ''