one o'clock
Good-night . '' The door closed on him . Meanwhile , furiously driven by the wind out of the north , the fire had taken a giant 's dimensions for its own . Shortly after one o'clock the entire block between Tremont and Washington , School and Bromfield was one vast seething furnace from whose throat the fire burst now southward and upward with a roar . The wind was bringing its element of peril to add to the conflagration 's own ; it caught the white heat from the blazing mass of buildings and started it sweeping southward in a devastating wave of superheated fluid air . As the man on the Common had said , this was a fire -- but rather was it Fire , the essence of the god , the very burning breath of Loki . The city was in the hand of something greater than chance and more sinister than circumstance .