Sally woke with a sudden movement. She heard strange sounds; she could smell smoke. The room was full of smoke. She coughed. What was happening? Her bedroom door opened with a bang and her mother ran in, her face white.
"Get up Sally, we have to go! Get dressed now!" Her mother disappeared back into the house.
Sally jumped from her bed and opened the window. Screams and cries came from the streets below. Sally watched people throw their things into carts, horses threading the ground, keen to leave.
"Hey, what's happening?" Sally yelled.
"Fire!" her neighbour shouted back.
"Coming from Pudding Lane! Get out now Sally! No one is safe!"
Sally pulled her window shut and got changed as quickly as she could. Downstairs, she found her father, mother and sister jamming their things into a handcart. They watched people trying to put out the big fire with leather buckets full of water. It didn't seem to make any difference, as the fire jumped from one building to the next.
"The houses are so close tighter and made of wood!" Sally noticed, as she tripped over candlesticks, burnt pans and odd bits of furniture that people had dropped in the streets.
The grocer's boy, Tom Winter, saw Sally and said, "Some people are going to St. Paul's Cathedral to stay safe. Made of stone. Won't burn like wood." Sally nodded, but followed her parents down the dark street.
They walked and walked. Finally, they arrived at Moorfields. It was a wide-open space with no buildings to burn. They were safe.
