AN ALARM OF FIRE.
Every day some one of us called to see Jimmy. He was well taken care
of, and got along nicely. Jack-in-the-Box lent him books, and each day
a fresh bouquet was sent in by Miss Glidden.
One day Monkey Roe called on him.
"Jimmy," said he, "you know all about poetry, I suppose."
"I know something about it," said Jimmy. "I have written considerable."
"And are you well enough yet to undertake an odd job in it?"
"Oh, yes," said Jimmy. "A fellow doesn't have to be very well to write
poetry."
"It isn't exactly writing poetry that I want done," said Monkey. "It's
a very odd job, indeed. You might call it repairing poetry. Do poets
ever repair poetry, as well as make it new?"
"I don't know," said Jimmy. "I should think it might be done in some
cases."
"Well, now," said Monkey, "I have a broken poem. Some part of every
line is gone. But the rhymes are all there, and many of the other
words, and most of the beginnings of the lines. I thought a poet would
know how to fill up all the blank spaces, and make it just as it was
when it was whole."
"I don't know," said Jimmy, doubtfully. "It might be possible to do it,
and it might not. I'll do what I can for you. Let me see it, if you
have it with you."
Monkey pulled out of his pocket the mutilated poem of Holman's which
Ned had pieced together, and, after smoothing it out, handed it to
Jimmy.
As Jimmy looked it over, he turned every color which it is possible for
an unhappy human countenance to assume, and then gave a heavy groan.
"Where did you get this, Monkey?" said he.
"Found it," said Monkey.
"Found it--impossible!" said Jimmy.
"Upon my word, I did find it, and just in the shape you see it now. But
what of it?"
"Where did you find it?" said Jimmy.
"In Rogers's printing-office, kicking around on the floor. It seemed to
be thrown away as waste paper; so I thought there was no harm in taking
it. And when I read it, it looked to me like a curious sort of puzzle,
which I thought would interest you. But you seem to take it very
seriously."
"It's a serious matter," said Jimmy.
"No harm done, I hope," said Monkey.
"There may be," said Jimmy. "I can't tell. Some things about it I can't
understand. I must ask you to let me keep this."
"If it's so very important," said Monkey, "it ought to be taken back to
Phaeton Rogers, as it was in his office that I found it."
"No," said Jimmy; "it doesn't belong to him."
"Then you know something about it?" said Monkey.
"Yes, Monkey," said Jimmy, "I do know considerable about it. But it is
a confidential matter entirely, and I shall have to insist on keeping
this."
"All right!" said Monkey. "I'll take your word for it."
A few days after this, we were visiting Jack in his box, when, as he
was turning over the leaves of his scrap-book to find something he
wanted to show us, Phaeton exclaimed:
"What's that I saw?" and, turning back a leaf or two, pointed to an
exact fac-simile of the mutilated poem. It had evidently been made by
laying a sheet of oiled paper over the original, and carefully tracing
the letters with a pencil.
"Oh, that," said Jack, "is something that Monkey Roe brought here. He
said it was a literary puzzle, and wanted me to see if I could restore
the lines. I've been so busy I haven't tried it yet."
Phaeton at once wrote a note to Monkey, asking him to bring back the
original; whereupon Monkey called at the office and explained why he
could not return it.
"All right! I'll see Jimmy about it myself," said Phaeton. "But have
you made any other tracings of it besides the one Jack-in-the-Box has?"
"Only two others," said Monkey.
"Where are they?"
"One I have at home."
"And the other?"
"I sent it to Miss Glidden, with a note saying that, as I had heard she
wrote poetry sometimes, I thought she might be interested in this
poetical puzzle."
"Good gracious!" said Phaeton. "There's no use in trying to dip up
_that_ spilled milk."
* * * * *
In those days there was an excitement and pleasure enjoyed by many
boys, which was denied to Phaeton, Ned, and me. This was the privilege
of running to fires. Nearly all large fires occurred in the night, and
Mr. Rogers would not permit his boys to turn out from their warm beds
and run at breathless speed to the other side of the town to see a
building burned. So they had to lie still and possess their souls in
impatience while they heard the clanging of the bells and the rattling
of the engine, and perhaps saw through their window the lurid
reflection on the midnight sky. There was no need for my parents to
forbid me, since none of these things ever woke me.
Running to fires, at least in cities, is now a thing of the past. The
alarm is communicated silently by telegraph to the various
engine-houses, a team is instantly harnessed to the engine, and with
two or three men it is driven to the fire, which is often extinguished
without the inhabitants of the next street knowing that there has been
a fire at all.
At the time of this story, the steam fire-engine had not been invented,
and there were no paid fire departments. The hand-engine had a long
pole on each side, called a brake, fastened to a frame that worked up
and down like a pump-handle. When the brake on one side was down, that
on the other was up. The brakes were long enough for nearly twenty men
to stand in a row on each side and work them. No horses were used, but
there was a long double rope, called a drag-rope, by which the men
themselves drew the engine from its house to the fire. They always ran
at full speed, and the two men who held the tongue, like the tongue of
a wagon, had to be almost as strong as horses, to control and guide it
as it went bumping over the pavement.
Each engine had a number and a name, and there was an organized
company, of from forty to seventy men, who had it in charge, managed it
at fires, drew it out on parade-days, took pride in it, and bragged
about it.
The partiality of the firemen for their own engine and company was as
nothing in comparison with that of the boys. Every boy in town had a
violent affection for some one company, to the exclusion of all others.
It might be because his father or his cousin belonged to that company,
or because he thought it had the handsomest uniform (for no two
companies were uniformed alike), or because it was first on the ground
when his uncle's store was on fire, or because he thought it was the
company destined to "wash" all others. Sometimes there would be no
discoverable reason for his choice; yet the boy would be just as strong
in his partisanship, and often his highest ambition would be to be able
to run with the hose-cart of his favorite company. The hose was carried
wound on a reel, trundled on two light wheels, which was managed by
half a dozen boys, fifteen or sixteen years of age.
When a fire broke out, the bells of all the churches were rung; first
slowly, striking one, two, three, four, etc., according to which
district of the town the fire was in, and then clanging away with rapid
strokes. Thus the whole town was alarmed, and a great many people
besides the firemen ran to every fire. Firemen jumped from their beds
at the first tap of a bell; or, if it was in the day-time, they
instantly threw down their tools, left their work, and ran.
There was an intense rivalry as to which engine should first get to the
fire, and which should pour the most effective stream of water upon it.
But the highest pitch of excitement was reached when there was an
opportunity to "wash." If the fire was too far from the water-supply to
be reached through the hose of a single engine, one engine would be
stationed at the side of the river or canal, or wherever the water was
taken from, to pump it up and send it as far as it could through its
hose, there discharging into the box of another engine, which, in turn,
forced it another distance, through its own hose. If the first engine
could send the water along faster than the second could dispose of it,
the result would be that in a few minutes the box of the second would
be overflowed, and she was then said to be "washed," which was
considered a great triumph for the company that had washed her.
This sort of rivalry caused the firemen to do their utmost, and they
did not always confine themselves to fair means. Sometimes, when an
engine was in danger of being washed, some member of the company would
follow the line of the other company's hose till he came to where it
passed through a dark place, and then, whipping out his pocket-knife,
would cut it open and run away. When there were not enough members of a
company present to man the brakes, or when they were tired out, the
foreman had the right to select men from among the bystanders, and
compel them to take hold.
Monkey Roe was a born fireman. He never failed to hear the first tap of
the bell, about ninety seconds after which he dropped from the casement
of his window to the roof of the kitchen, thence to the roof of the
back piazza, slid down a pillar, and was off for the fire, generally
following in the wake of Red Rover Three, which was the company he
sided with. It was entertaining to hear him relate his exciting
adventures; but it was also somewhat exasperating.
"I don't see," said Ned, after Monkey had finished one of these
thrilling narratives, "what Father means by never letting us run to a
fire. How does he suppose he's going to make men of us, if we never
begin to do anything manly?"
"Perhaps he doesn't think it is especially manly," said Phaeton.
"Not manly!" exclaimed Ned, in astonishment. "I should like to know
what's more manly than to take the tongue of Big Six when there's a
tremendous fire and they jump her all the way down State street. Or to
stand on the engine and yell at the men, when Torrent Two is trying to
wash her. Why, sometimes the foreman gets so excited that he batters
his trumpet all to pieces, pounding on the brakes, to cheer his men."
"Knocking trumpets to pieces is very manly, of course," said Phaeton,
smiling. "I didn't mean to say Father wouldn't consider it manly to be
a fireman. What I should have said was, that perhaps he thought there
were other ways to become manly. I should like to run to a fire once in
a while; not for the sake of manliness, but to see the fun."
The more Ned thought about it, the more it seemed to him it was a
continuous wrong. At last he spoke to his father about it, and set
forth so powerfully the danger of growing up without becoming manly,
that Mr. Rogers laughingly told the boys they might run to the very
next fire.
The next thing was to count me in. The only difficulty to be overcome
in my case was sleepiness. We canvassed many plans. Ned suggested a
pistol fastened to the side of my window, with a string tied to the
trigger and reaching to the ground, so that he or Phaeton could pull it
on their way to the fire. The serious objection to this was that a
shower would prevent the pistol from going off. It was also suggested
that I have a bell, or tie the cord to a chair or something that could
be pulled over and make a racket.
"The objection to all those things is," said Phaeton, "that they will
disturb the whole family. Now, if you would make a rope-ladder, and
hang it out of your window every night, one of us could climb up
quietly, and speak to you. Then you could get out at the window and
come down the ladder, instead of going through the house and waking up
the people."
This suggestion struck us with great force; it doubled the anticipated
romance. Under instructions from Phaeton, Ned and I made the ladder. In
the store-room we found a bed-cord, which answered well for the sides.
The rungs must be made of wood, and we had considerable difficulty in
finding anything suitable. Any wood that we could have cut would be so
soft that the rungs, to be strong enough, must have been very bulky.
This was an objection, as I was to roll up the ladder in the day-time,
and hide it under my bed. At last, Ned came over to tell me he had
found just the thing, and took me to the attic of their house to see.
"There," said he, pointing to half a dozen ancient-looking chairs in a
cobwebbed corner. "That is exactly what we want. The rounds of those
old chairs are as tough as iron."
"Whose chairs are they?" said I.
"Oh, anybody's, nobody's," said Ned. "I suppose they are a hundred
years old. And who's ever going to sit in such awkward-looking old
things as those?"
It did seem preposterous to suppose that anybody would; so we went to
work to take out the rounds at once. The old chairs were very strong,
and after we had pulled at them in vain to spring them apart enough for
the rounds to drop out, we got a saw and sawed off all the rounds an
inch or two from the legs.
With these, the ladder was soon made, and I went home and drove two
great spikes into the sill of my window, to hang it by.
I used to hang out the ladder every night, and take it in every
morning. The first two nights I lay awake till almost daylight,
momentarily expecting the stroke of the fire-bell. But it was not heard
on those nights, nor the next, nor the next.
"It would be just like our luck," said Ned, "if there should never be
another fire in this town."
"It would be lucky for the town," said Phaeton, who overheard him.
"Perhaps so," said Ned; "and yet I could point out some houses that
would look a great deal better burned up. I wonder if it would do any
good to hang a horseshoe over the door."
"What for?" said Phaeton. "To prevent them from burning?"
"Oh, no," said Ned. "I mean over the door of our office, to--to--well,
not exactly to make those houses burn, but to bring us good luck
generally."
It did seem a long time for the town to be without a conflagration, and
one day Ned came into the office looking quite dejected.
"What do you think has happened now?" said he. "Just like our luck,
only worse and worse."
"What is it?" said I.
"The whole fire department's going to smash."
"I shouldn't think you'd call that bad luck," said Phaeton. "For now
when there _is_ a fire, it will be a big one, if there's no fire
department to prevent it from spreading."
"But the best fun," said Ned, "is to see the firemen handle the fire,
and to see Red Rover Three wash Cataract Eight. I saw her do it
beautifully at annual inspection. What I want is a tremendous big fire,
and plenty of engines to play on it."
The explanation of Ned's alarming intelligence was that the fire
department had got into a quarrel with the common council, and
threatened to disband. One company, who had rather a shabby
engine-house, and were refused an appropriation for a new one, tied
black crape on the brakes of their engine, drew it through the
principal streets, and finally, stopping before the court-house yard,
lifted the machine bodily and threw it over the fence. Then they threw
their fireman hats after it, and quietly disbanded. This company had
been known as Reliance Five. The incident frightened the common council
into giving the other companies what they asked for; but there was
never more a Number Five company in that city.
I had got pretty tired of hanging out my rope ladder every night, and
rolling it up every morning, when at last the hour of destiny struck,
as the majority of poets would say--that is, the court-house bell
struck the third district, and steeple after steeple caught up the
tune, till, in a few minutes, the whole air was full of the wild
clangor of bells. At the same time, the throats of innumerable men and
boys were open, and the word "Fire!" was pouring out from them in a
continuous stream.
"Wake up, Ned!" said Phaeton. "Here it is at last, and it's a big one."
Ned bounded to his feet, looked out at the window, exclaimed "Oh,
glory!" as he saw the lurid sky, and then began to get into his clothes
with the utmost rapidity. Suddenly he stopped.
"Look here, Fay," said he. "This is Sunday night. I'm afraid Father
won't let us go, after all."
"Perhaps not," said Phaeton.
"Then, what must we do?" said Ned.
"Do the best we can."
"The question is, what _is_ best?" said Ned. "It is evident we ought to
go out of the window, but it's too high from the ground."
"Then we must make a rope," said Phaeton.
"What can we make it of?"
"The bedclothes, of course."
"That's a splendid idea!--that saves us," said Ned, and he set about
tying the sheets together.
Before Phaeton was dressed, Ned had made the rope and cast it out of
the window, first tying one end to the bedpost, and sliding down to the
ground, made off, without waiting for his brother.
He came straight to my ladder, and had his foot on the first rung, when
a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder.
"So you're the one he sends in, are you?" said a deep voice, and Ned
looked up into the face of a policeman. "I'd rather have caught the old
one," he continued, "but you'll do. I've been watching this burglar
arrangement for two hours. And by the way, I must have some of it for
evidence; the old one may take it away while I'm disposing of you." And
he turned and with his pocket-knife cut off about a yard of my ladder,
taking which in one hand and Ned in the other, he hurried away to the
police-station.
[Illustration: "NED LOOKED UP INTO THE FACE OF A POLICEMAN."]
It was useless for Ned to protest that he was not a burglar, nor a
burglar's partner, or to tell the true story of the ladder, or to ask
to be taken to his father. The policeman considered himself too wise
for any such delusive tricks.
"Mr. Rogers's boy, eh?" said he. "Why don't you call yourself George
Washington's boy, while you're about it?"
"Washington never had any boys," said Ned.
"Didn't eh? Well, now, I congratulate George on that. A respectable man
never knows what his sons may come to, in these times."
"Washington didn't live in these times," said Ned; "he died hundreds of
years ago."
"Did, eh?" said the policeman. "I see that you're a great scholard; you
can go above me in the history class, young man. I never was no
scholard myself, but I know one when I see him; and I always feel bad
to put a scholard in quod."
"If I had my printing-office and a gun here," said Ned, "I'd put plenty
of quads into you."
"Would, eh?" said the policeman. "Well, now, it's lucky for me that
that are printing-office and them ere quads are quietly reposing
to-night in the dusky realms of imagination, aint it, young man? But
here's the quod _I_ spoke about--it's reality, you see." And they
ascended the steps of the station-house.
In the midst of sound sleep, I woke on hearing my name called, and saw
the dark outlines of a human head and shoulders at my window, projected
against a background of illuminated sky. I had heard Father reading an
article in the evening paper about a gang of burglars being in the
town, and I suppose that in my half-wakened condition that mingled
itself vaguely in my thoughts with the idea of fire. At any rate, I
seized a pitcher of water and threw its contents toward the light, and
then, clubbing the pitcher, was about to make a desperate assault on
the supposed burglar, when he spoke again.
[Illustration: PHAETON IS TAKEN FOR A BURGLAR.]
"What are you doing? Don't you know me?"
"Oh, is that you, Fay?"
"Yes, and you've drenched me through and through," said he, as he
climbed in.
"That's too bad," said I. "I didn't know what I was about."
"It's a tremendous fire," said he, "and I hate to lose the time to go
back home and change my clothes. Besides, I don't know that I could,
for we made a rope of the bedclothes and slid down from our window, and
I couldn't climb up again."
"Oh, never mind, put on a suit of mine," said I, and got out my Sunday
suit, the only clothes I had that seemed likely to be large enough for
Phaeton. It was a tight squeeze, but he got into them.
"Why did you make your ladder so short?" said he.
"It reaches to the ground," said I.
"No, it doesn't," said Phaeton; "I had hard work to get started on it.
I expected to find Ned standing at the foot of it, but he was so
impatient to see the fire, I suppose he couldn't wait for us."
We dropped from the shortened ladder to the ground, passed out at the
gate and shut it noiselessly behind us, and then broke into a run
toward that quarter of the town where both a pillar of flame and a
pillar of cloud rose through the night and lured us on.
At the same time our mouths opened themselves by instinct, and that
thrilling word "Fire!" was paid out continuously, like a sparkling
ribbon, as we ran.