RUNNING WITH THE MACHINE.
Presently we heard a tremendous noise behind us,--a combination of
rumble, rattle, and shout. It was Red Rover Three going to the fire.
She was for some reason a little belated, and was trying to make up
lost time. At least forty men had their hands on the drag-rope, and
were taking her along at a lively rate, while the two who held the
tongue and steered the engine, being obliged to run at the same time,
had all they could do. The foreman was standing on the top, with a
large tin trumpet in his hand, through which he occasionally shouted an
order to the men.
"Let's take hold of the drag-rope and run with her," said Phaeton.
If I had been disposed to make any objection, I had no opportunity, for
Phaeton immediately made a dive for a place where there was a longer
interval than usual between the men, and seized the rope. Not to follow
him would have seemed like desertion, and I thought if I was ever to be
a boy of spirit, this was the time to begin.
When a boy for the first time laid his hand upon the drag-rope of an
engine under swift motion, he experienced a thrill of mingled joy and
fear to which nothing else in boy-life is comparable. If he missed his
hold, or tired too soon, he would almost certainly be thrown to the
ground and run over. If he could hang on, and make his legs fly fast
enough, he might consider himself as sharing in the glory when the
machine rolled proudly up in the light of the burning building, and was
welcomed with a shout.
There comes to most men, in early manhood, a single moment which
perhaps equals this in its delicious blending of fear and rapture--but
let us leave that to the poets.
Phaeton and I hung on with a good grip, while the inspiration of the
fire in sight, and the enthusiasm of our company, seemed to lend us
more than our usual strength and speed. But before we reached the fire,
a noise was heard on a street that ran into ours at an angle some
distance ahead. The foreman's ear caught it instantly, and he knew it
was Cataract Eight doing her best in order to strike into the main road
ahead of us.
"Jump her, men! jump her!" he shouted, and pounded on the brakes with
his tin trumpet.
The eighty legs and four wheels on which Red Rover Three was making her
way to the fire each doubled its speed, while forty mouths yelled "Ki
yi!" and the excited foreman repeated his admonition to "Jump her,
boys! jump her!"
[Illustration: "JUMP HER, BOYS! JUMP HER!"]
Phaeton and I hung on for dear life, though I expected every moment to
find myself unable to hang on any longer. Sometimes we measured the
ground in a sort of seven-league-boot style, and again we seemed to be
only as rags fastened to the rope and fluttering in the wind. The men
at the tongue were tossed about in all sorts of ways. Sometimes one
would be lying on his breast on the end of it where it curved up like a
horse's neck, and the next minute one or both of them would be thrown
almost under it. Whenever a wheel struck an uneven paving-stone, these
men would be jerked violently to one side, and we could feel the shock
all along the rope. It seemed sometimes as if the engine was simply
being hurled through the air, occasionally swooping down enough in its
flight to touch the ground and rebound again. All the while the
church-bells of the city, in the hands of sextons doubly excited by
fire and fees, kept up a direful clang. I doubt whether the celebrated
clang of Apollo's silver bow could at all compare with it.
As we neared the forks of the road, the foreman yelled and pounded yet
more vociferously, and through the din we could hear that Cataract
Eight was doing the same thing. At last we shot by the corner just in
time to compel our rival to fall in behind us, and a minute or two
later we burst through the great ring of people that surrounded the
fire, and made our entrance, as it were, upon the stage, with the
roaring, crackling flames of three tall buildings for our mighty
foot-lights.
We had jumped her.
The fire was in the Novelty Works--an establishment where were
manufactured all sorts of small wares in wood and iron. The works
occupied three buildings, pretty close together, surrounded by a small
strip of yard. Either because the firemen, from the recent
demoralization of the department, were long in coming upon the ground,
or for some other reason, the fire was under good headway, and all
three buildings were in flames, before a drop of water was thrown.
Phaeton whispered to me that we had better get away from the engine
now, or they might expect us to work at the brakes; so we dodged back
and forth through the crowd, and came out in front of the fire at
another point. Here we met Monkey Roe, who had run with Red Rover's
hose-cart, was flushed with excitement, and was evidently enjoying the
fire most heartily.
"Oh, she's a big one!" said he, "probably the biggest we ever had in
this town--or will be, before she gets through. I have great hopes of
that old shanty across the road; it ought to have been burned down long
ago. If this keeps on much longer, that'll have to go. Don't you see
the paint peeling off already?"
The "old shanty" referred to was a large wooden building used as a
furniture factory, and it certainly did look as if Monkey's warmest
hopes would be realized. I observed that he wore a broad belt of red
leather, on which was inscribed the legend:
WE HAVE CAN AND WILL
"Monkey," said I, "what's that?"
"Why, don't you know that?" said he; "that's Red Rover's motto."
"Yes, of course it is," said I; "but what does it mean?"
"It means," said Monkey, with solemn emphasis, "we have washed Eight,
we can wash Eight, and we will wash Eight."
There were older people than Monkey Roe to whom the washing of Eight,
rather than the extinguishing of fires, was the chief end of a
company's existence.
"Yes," said I, catching some of Monkey's enthusiasm, in addition to
what I had already acquired by running with Red Rover, "I think we can
wash her."
The next moment I was pierced through and through by pangs of
conscience. Here was I, a boy whose uncle was a member of Cataract
Eight, and who ought, therefore, to have been a warm admirer and
partisan of that company, not only running to a fire with her deadly
rival, but openly expressing the opinion that she could be washed. But
such is the force of circumstances in their relative distance,--smaller
ones that are near us often counterbalancing much larger ones that
happen, for the moment, to be a little farther off. It did not occur to
me to be ashamed of myself for expressing an opinion which was not
founded on a single fact of any kind whatever. The consciences of very
few people seem ever to be troubled on that point.
"The Hook-and-Ladder is short-handed to-night," said Monkey. "I think
I'll take an axe."
"What does he mean by taking an axe?" said I to Phaeton.
"I don't know," said Phaeton; "let's follow him, and find out."
Monkey passed around the corner into the next street, where stood a
very long, light carriage, with two or three ladders upon it and a few
axes in sockets on the sides. These axes differed from ordinary ones in
having the corner of the head prolonged into a savage-looking spike.
Monkey spoke to the man in charge, who handed him an axe and a
fireman's hat. This hat was made of heavy sole-leather, painted black,
the crown being rounded into a hemisphere, and the rim extended behind
so that it covered his shoulder-blades. On the front was a shield
ornamented with two crossed ladders, a trumpet, and a large figure 2.
He took the axe, and put on the hat, leaving his own, and at the man's
direction went to where a dozen axe-men were chopping at one side of a
two-story wooden building that made a sort of connecting-link between
the Novelty Works and the next large block.
Monkey seemed to hew away with the best of them; and, though they were
continually changing about, we could always tell him from the rest by
his shorter stature and the fact that his hat seemed too large for him.
Before long, a dozen firemen, with a tall ladder on their shoulders,
appeared from somewhere, and quickly raised it against the building.
Three of them then mounted it, dragging up a pole with an enormous iron
hook at the end. But there was no projection at the edge of the roof
into which they could fix the hook.
"Stay where you are," shouted the foreman to them through his trumpet.
Then to the assistant foreman he shouted:
"Send up your lightest man to cut a place."
The assistant foreman looked about him, seized on Monkey as the
lightest man, and hastily ordered him up.
The next instant, Monkey was going up the ladder, axe in hand, passed
the men who were holding the hook, and stepped upon the roof. While he
stood there, we could see him plainly, a dark form against a lurid
background, as with a few swift strokes he cut a hole in the roof,
perhaps a foot from the edge.
The hook was lifted once more, and its point settled into the place
thus prepared for it. The pole that formed the handle of the hook
reached in a long slope nearly to the ground, and a heavy rope formed a
continuation of it. At the order of the foreman, something like a
hundred men seized this rope and stretched themselves out in line for a
big pull. At the same time, some of the firemen near the building,
seeing the first tongues of flame leap out of the window nearest to the
ladder,--for the fire had somehow got into this wooden building
also,--hastily pulled down the ladder, leaving Monkey standing on the
roof, with no apparent means of escape.
A visible shudder ran through the crowd, followed by shouts of "Raise
the ladder again!"
The ladder was seized by many hands, but in a minute more it was
evident that it would be useless to raise it, for the flames were
pouring out of every window, and nobody could have passed up or down it
alive.
"Stand from under!" shouted Monkey, and threw his axe to the ground.
Then, getting cautiously over the edge, he seized the hook with both
hands, threw his feet over it, thus swinging his body beneath it, and
came down the pole and the rope hand over hand, like his agile
namesake, amid the thundering plaudits of the multitude.
As soon as he was safely landed, the men at the rope braced themselves
for a pull, and with a "Yo, heave, ho!" the whole side of the building
was torn off and came over into the street with a deafening crash,
while a vast fountain of fire arose from its ruins, and the crowd
swayed back as the heat struck upon their faces.
By this time the engines had got into position, stretched their hose,
and were playing away vigorously. The foremen were sometimes bawling
through their trumpets, and sometimes battering them to pieces in
excitement. The men that held the nozzles and directed the streams were
gradually working their way nearer and nearer to the buildings, as the
water deadened portions of the fire and diminished the heat. And,
through all the din and uproar, we could hear the steady, alternating
thud of the brakes as they struck the engine-boxes on either side.
Occasionally this motion on some particular engine would be quickened
for a few minutes, just after a vigorous oration by the foreman; but it
generally settled back into the regular pace.
And now a crack appeared in the front wall of one of the tall brick
buildings, near the corner, running all the way from ground to roof. A
suppressed shout from the crowd signified that all had noticed it, and
served as a warning to the hose-men to look out for themselves.
The crack grew wider at the top. The immense side wall began to totter,
then hung poised for a few breathless seconds, and at last broke from
the rest of the building and rushed down to ruin.
It fell upon the burning wreck of the wooden structure, and sent sparks
and fire-brands flying for scores of yards in every direction.
The hose-men crept up once more under the now dangerous front wall, and
sent their streams in at the windows, where a mass of living flame
seemed to drink up the water as fast as it could be delivered, and only
to increase thereby.
It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been an hour, after
the falling of the side wall,--time passes so strangely during
excitement,--when another great murmur from the crowd announced the
trembling of the front wall. The hose-men were obliged to drop the
nozzles and run for their lives.
After the preliminary tremor which always occurs, either in reality or
in the spectator's imagination, the front wall doubled itself down by a
diagonal fold, breaking off on a line running from the top of the side
wall still standing to the bottom of the one that had fallen, and
piling itself in a crumbled mass, out of which rose a great cloud of
dust from broken plaster.
The two other brick buildings, notwithstanding thousands of gallons of
water were thrown into them, burned on fiercely till they burned
themselves out. But no more walls fell, and, for weeks afterward, the
four stories of empty and blackened ruin towered in a continual menace
above their surroundings.
The old shanty which Monkey Roe had hoped would burn, had been saved by
the unwearied exertions of the firemen, who from the moment the engines
were in action had kept it continually wet.
"The best of the fire was over," as an habitual fire-goer expressed it,
the crowd was thinning out, and Phaeton and I went to look for Ned,
who, poor fellow! was pining in a dungeon where he could only look
through iron bars upon a square of reddened sky.
We had hardly started upon this quest when several church-bells struck
up a fresh alarm, and the news ran from mouth to mouth that there was
another fire; but nobody seemed to know exactly where it was.
"Let's follow one of the engines," said Phaeton; and this time we cast
our lot with Rough-and-Ready Seven--not with hand on the drag-ropes to
assist in jumping her, but rather as ornamental tail-pieces.
"I think I shall take an axe this time," said Phaeton, as we ran along.
"I've no doubt you could handle one as well as Monkey Roe," said
I,--"that is,"--and here I hesitated somewhat, "if you had on an easy
suit of clothes. Mine seem to be a little too tight to give perfectly
free play to your arms."
"Oh, as to that," said Phaeton, who had fairly caught the fireman
fever, "if I find the coat too tight, I can throw it off."
The new fire proved to be at Mr. Glidden's house. It had probably
caught from cinders wafted from the great fire and falling upon the
steps. All about the front door was in a blaze.
At the sight of this, Phaeton seemed to become doubly excited. He
rushed to the Hook-and-Ladder carriage, and came back in a minute with
an axe in his hand and a fireman's hat on his head, which proved
somewhat too large for him, and gave him the appearance of the
victorious gladiator in Gérôme's famous picture.
He seemed now to consider himself a veteran fireman, and, without
orders from anybody, rushed up to the side door and assaulted it
vigorously, shivering it, with a few blows, into a mass of splinters.
He passed in through the wreck, and, for a few minutes, was lost to
sight. I barely caught a glimpse of a man passing in behind him. What
took place inside of the house, I learned afterward.
Miss Glidden had been sitting up reading "Ivanhoe," and had paid no
attention to the great fire, except to look out of the window a few
minutes on the first alarm. Hearing this thundering noise at the door,
she stepped to the head of the stairs, in a half-dazed condition, and
saw ascending them, as she expressed it, "a grotesque creature, in
tight clothes, wearing an enormous mediæval helmet, and bearing in his
hand a gleaming battle-axe." She could only think him the ghost of a
Templar, screamed, and fainted.
The man who had gone in after Phaeton, passed him on the stairs, and
soon emerged from the house, bearing the young lady in his arms. It was
Jack-in-the-Box.
Phaeton came out a few minutes later, bringing her canary in its cage.
[Illustration: "THIS MUST BE PUT IN A SAFE PLACE."]
"This must be put in a safe place," said he to me; "Miss Glidden thinks
the world of it. I'll run home with it, and come back again." And he
ran off, just escaping arrest at the hands of a policeman who thought
he was stealing the bird, but who was not able to run fast enough to
catch him.
Meanwhile the firemen were preparing to extinguish the new fire. There
was no water-supply near enough for a single engine to span the
distance. Some of them had been left at the great fire, to continue
pouring water upon it, while the chief engineer ordered four of them to
take care of this one.
They formed two lines, Red Rover Three and Big Six taking water from
the canal and sending it along to Cataract Eight and Rough-and-Ready
Seven, who threw it upon the burning house.
As Phaeton, Jack-in-the-Box, Miss Glidden, and the canary emerged from
the house, half a dozen men rushed in--some of them firemen, and some
citizens who had volunteered their help. In a little while, one of them
appeared at an upper window, having in his hands a large looking-glass
with an elaborately carved frame. Without stopping to open the window,
he dashed the mirror through sash, glass, and all, and as it struck the
ground it was shivered into a thousand fragments.
Then another man appeared at the window with an armful of small framed
pictures, and, taking them one at a time by the corner, "scaled" them
out into the air.
Then the first man appeared again, dragging a mattress. Resting this on
the window-sill, he tied a rope around it, and let it down slowly and
carefully to the ground.
The second man appeared again in turn; this time with a handsome china
wash-bowl and pitcher, which he sent out as if they had been shot from
a cannon. In falling, they just escaped smashing the head of a
spectator. Bearing in mind, I suppose, the great mercantile principle
that a "set" of articles should always be kept together, he hurriedly
threw after them such others as he found on the wash-stand,--the cake
of soap striking the chief engineer in the neck, while the tall, heavy
slop-jar--hurled last of all to complete the set--turned some beautiful
somersaults, emptying its contents on Lukey Finnerty, and landed in the
midst of a table full of glassware which had been brought out from the
dining-room.
Next appeared, at another upper window, two men carrying a bureau that
proved to be too large to go through. With that promptness which is so
necessary in great emergencies, one of the men instantly picked up his
axe, and, with two or three blows, cut the bureau in two in the middle,
after which both halves were quickly bundled through the window and
fell to the ground.
The next thing they saved was a small, open book-case filled with
handsomely bound books. They brought it to the window, with all the
books upon it, rested one end on the sill, and then, tripping up its
heels, started it on the hyperbolic curve made and provided for
projectiles of its class. If the Commissioner of Patents could have
seen it careering through the air, he would have rejected all future
applications for a monopoly in revolving book-cases. When it reached
the ground, there was a general diffusion of good literature.
They finally discovered, in some forgotten closet, a large number of
dusty hats and bonnets of a by-gone day, and came down the stairs
carefully bringing a dozen or two of them. Close behind them followed
the other two, one having his arms full of pillows and bolsters, while
the other carried three lengths of old stove-pipe.
"We saved what we could," said one, with an evident consciousness of
having done his duty.
"Yes," said another, "and it's too hot to go back there, though there's
lots of furniture that hasn't been touched yet."
"What a pity!" said several of the bystanders.
Meanwhile the Hook-and-Ladder company had fastened one of their great
hooks in the edge of the roof, and were hauling away with a "Yo, heave,
ho!" to pull off the side of the house. They had only got it fairly
started, separated from the rest of the frame by a crack of not more
than five or six inches, when the chief engineer came up and ordered
them to desist, as he expected to be able to extinguish the fire.
And now the engines were in full play. A little trap-door in the top of
Cataract Eight's box was open, and the assistant foreman of Red Rover
Three was holding in it the nozzle of Three's hose, which discharged a
terrific stream.
The same was true of Big Six and Rough-and-Ready Seven.
I never heard a more eloquent orator than the foreman of Cataract
Eight, as he stood on the box of his engine, pounded with his trumpet
on the air-chamber, and exhorted the men to "down with the brakes!"
"shake her up lively!" "rattle the irons!" "don't be washed!" etc., all
of which expressions seemed to have one meaning, and the brakes came
down upon the edges of the box like the blows of a trip-hammer, making
the engine dance about as if it were of pasteboard.
The foreman of Red Rover Three was also excited, and things in that
quarter were equally lively.
For a considerable time it was an even contest. Eight's box was kept
almost full of water, and no more; while it seemed as if both companies
had attained the utmost rapidity of stroke that flesh and bones were
capable of, or wood and iron could endure.
But at last four fresh men, belonging to Red Rover Three, who had been
on some detached service, came up, leaped upon the box, and each
putting a foot upon the brakes, added a few pounds to their momentum.
The water rose rapidly in Eight's box, and in about a minute completely
overflowed it, drenching the legs of her men, and making everything
disagreeable in the vicinity.
A shout went up from the bystanders, and Three's men instantly stopped
work, took off their hats, and gave three tremendous cheers.
We had washed her.
Big Six was trying to do the same thing by Rough-and-Ready Seven, and
had almost succeeded when the hose burst. Phaeton and I were standing
within a step of the spot where it gave way, and we ourselves were
washed.
"Let's go home," said he, as he surrendered his axe and fire-hat to a
Hook-and-Ladder man.
"Yes," said I, "it's time. They've poured water enough into that house
to float the Ark, and all the best of the fire is over."
As we left the scene of our labors, I observed that my Sunday coat,
besides being drenched, was split open across the back.
"Phaeton," said I, "you forgot to throw off my coat when you went to
work with the axe, didn't you?"
"That's so," said he. "The fact is, I suppose I must have been a little
excited."
"I've no doubt you were," said I. "Putting out fires and saving
property is very exciting work."