If the fire once leaped Thames Street, and attacked the south side, nothing short of a miracle could save the bridge houses, unless some drastic step were taken; and the only method which he could devise in the emergency, was that some of the houses at the northern end should be demolished by means of gunpowder, and the ruins soaked in water, so that the passage of the flames might be stayed there.
But at this suggestion the faces of those who lived in these same houses grew long and grave, as indeed the speaker had anticipated.
The owners were not prepared for so great a sacrifice.

They argued that with the wind where it was, the fire might in all probability not extend southward at all, in which case their loss would he useless.

They talked and argued the matter out for about twenty anxious minutes, and in fine flatly refused to have their houses touched, preferring to take their chance of escaping the fire to this wholesale demolition.
This was no more than the Master Builder had foreseen, and without attempting further argument he turned to his neighbour and said: "Then it must be your workshops and storerooms that must go.

You can better spare them than the house itself; and on the opposite side there is the empty house where poor David Norris lived and died.

There is none living there now to hinder us.