THE CONFLAGRATION.
One night, some months after the occurrences related in the last few
chapters, Rollo had an opportunity of witnessing with Jonas a great
conflagration in the city. This incident may very properly be described
in this volume, which relates to the phenomena of fire.
Jonas and Rollo had gone to the city on some business for Mr. Holiday.
Jonas’s orders were to return that night if he could get through with
his business; if not, to wait until the next day. It happened that he
could not get through with his business, for the man whom he wished to
see was not at home. They said he would be at home that night, and that
Jonas could see him early the next morning. So they had to spend the
night in the city. They took a walk in the evening, doing some errands,
and looking at the curious things in the shop windows; and at last they
went back to the hotel, and retired to bed. Jonas had engaged a room for
himself very near Rollo’s room.
Rollo did not go to sleep for some time, his mind being somewhat excited
by the novelty of the scenes which he had been witnessing, and by the
strange place in which he was now trying to go to sleep. At length,
however, he got asleep, and dreamed that he was buying a large and
beautiful rocking-horse for Nathan, at one of the toy-shops in the
city,—and was just mounting the rocking-horse to take a little ride
himself, when his visions were disturbed by hearing some strange,
confused, and terrifying sounds. He started up and listened. There
seemed to be a great sound in the street, and a bright light was
flashing and moving upon the wall over his head. He also heard a noise
at the door of his room; and, before he had time to consider what all
this disturbance meant, he heard Jonas’s voice, saying in a gentle
tone,—
“Rollo.”
“What?” said Rollo, eagerly.
“Don’t be frightened. It’s only a fire.”
“A fire! where?” said Rollo.
“I don’t know where it is,” replied Jonas.
Rollo listened a moment, and he could hear the city bells ringing in
very mournful and alarming tones, some near, and some at a distance.
There was one belonging to a church nearly opposite to the hotel, which
sounded very loud and near. The flashing light upon the wall moved
gradually along the room, and then disappeared; and soon after another
came in on the opposite side, and moved along the wall in the same
manner. Rollo could hear the sound of a great uproar in the street
below, consisting of confused but loud and hoarse voices, the heavy
rattling of wheels, and a bell which sounded in a very peculiar manner
as it moved along the street, as if it was rung by being jolted and
jarred.
Rollo and Jonas went to the window to look out. It was a dark and cloudy
night, and the window was very high from the street, as Rollo’s room was
in one of the upper stories of the house. Still they could look down
upon the street below, and see that it was filled with a torrent of men,
moving along in a hurried manner, the whole mass being illuminated by
great torches which some of the men carried in their hands. They were
dragging along a fire engine, which thundered over the pavement as they
ran, in the most terrifying manner.
“Let’s go and see the fire,” said Rollo.
“Well,” said Jonas, “we might; only perhaps there may not be any fire.
Perhaps it is only an alarm.”
“No matter,” said Rollo; “let us go and see the alarm.”
Rollo knew that to witness the scene of noise and excitement in the
street, would interest him very much, even if there was no house on
fire.
“Well,” said Jonas, “dress yourself as quick as you can, and I’ll come
in again when I’m ready.”
Jonas accordingly went out, and finished making his preparations, and
then returned. He required Rollo to put on his great-coat, for he said
there would be danger of taking cold in standing still in the chill
evening air, to look at the fire if they should find one. When they were
ready, they hurried down stairs.
The street seemed to be nearly still when they left Rollo’s room; but,
when they issued from the hotel, and stepped out upon the sidewalk, they
heard the sound of noise and uproar approaching again. They looked in
the direction from which the sound came, and saw a great torch coming
along the street, which flamed, and flashed, and illuminated the
pavements and the buildings on each side of it. It was followed by a
long, double line of men and boys, with other torches and lights at
intervals, pulling upon a rope; and farther behind they heard a very
heavy, lumbering sound of wheels, and a sort of confused roar of voices
mingling with it. It was another fire engine. It approached with great
rapidity, and a crowd of men and boys attended and followed it, so large
as to fill the street full; and, brushing rudely by Jonas and Rollo on
the sidewalk, they filled the air with their loud but hoarse and hollow
shouts. “Ahead with her! ahead with her!”
Rollo could not see the engine, for the street was perfectly filled,
while it passed, with a dense crowd of men and boys, all running along
by its side. Rollo thought that some of them would certainly get run
over.
“We’ll go a little slower,” said Jonas, “till the engine gets by, and
then we shall have more room.”
“No,” said Rollo, “let’s keep up. I want to see where they will go.”
“Well,” said Jonas,——“O, there’s the fire.”
Rollo looked forward where Jonas pointed. He saw, through the opening
between some tall buildings before them, a faint light in the sky. He
saw it however only for a few moments; for, as they passed on, the
towering walls of the city buildings intervened again, and hid it from
their view.
Pretty soon, however, at a turn of the street they came in view of the
light again; and now it looked much brighter than before. It spread
upwards, in fact, and illuminated a considerable part of the sky. The
sight of the light appeared to animate the engine-men, for they began to
run on faster than before, the heavy lumbering of the wheels, and the
shouts of, “Ahead with her!” sounding louder than ever. Opposite to
where Rollo and Jonas were, there was a light, tossing and dancing upon
the top of a tall pole, representing the number _ten_ in figures of
fire.
“O Jonas,” said Rollo, “look at that _ten_.”
“Yes,” said Jonas, “that is the number of the engine.”
“How can they make such fiery figures?”
“Why, they put the lamp in a glass lantern, and they paint the glass
black, all except a place left bare, of the shape of the figure which
they wish to have, and so the light shines through where the glass is
not painted, and that makes the figures of fire.”
Just then Rollo heard sounds of new uproar and confusion approaching by
another street. He looked in the direction, and saw an engine coming
with its long lines of men and its great crowds, its torches and its
thundering sounds. The great mass seemed to be coming on with prodigious
momentum. They were coming down into the street where they were, and
Rollo thought that they would certainly run over No. 10. When they
approached the junction of the streets, and saw that the street which
they were coming into was already filled up with another engine and the
crowds about it, they did not stop, but kept rushing on, and swept
around the corner directly into the crowd, where all became mixed and
mingled together, making confusion worse confounded. The crowd became so
dense that Rollo and Jonas could not have got along at all, were it not
that the crowd itself was moving on; and so every body that was among
them was necessarily borne onwards too.
Just then Rollo heard a very loud and hoarse voice calling out, “Hold
on, No. 10! Hold on, No. 10!”
“What’s that?” said Rollo.
“That’s a man with a speaking-trumpet,” said Jonas.
“What does he mean by _hold on_?”
“He means _stop_,” replied Jonas. “He wants No. 10 engine to stop here.”
The cry of the engineer, “Hold on, No. 10!” was repeated and reechoed by
a great many other voices in the crowd, though it was mingled and
confounded with many other noises, such as the rumbling of the wheels
upon the pavement, the _dinging_ of the engine bells, and shouts and
outcries from a hundred voices. At last, however, the men and boys
attached to No. 10 seemed to understand that they were to “_hold on_;”
and, accordingly, the engine gradually came to a stand, while the other,
which was No. 6, as Rollo learned from a bright figure 6 which he saw
tossing about in the air over the heads of those who were drawing it,
moved on.
The men about No. 10 took out some long handles, which were secured by
the side of the engine, and passed them through some iron rings, fitted
to receive them; and then they all took hold, ten or fifteen men on each
side ready to work the engine. Presently the order was given in the same
hoarse and hollow voice from the speaking-trumpet, “Play away, No. 10!”
and immediately the men began to work the long handles up and down, with
quick and heavy strokes.
“Why, Jonas,” said Rollo, “what are they doing?”
“They are working this engine,” said Jonas.
“What for?” said Rollo; “they are not near the fire.”
“I suppose there is a reservoir near here,” said Jonas, “and they are
driving the water from it along towards some engine that is near the
fire.”
“How does the water go?” said Rollo.
“In a hose,” said Jonas.
“What is a hose?” asked Rollo.
“It is a long leather pipe or tube. Come out this way, and we shall find
it, I suppose, lying along the street.”
So the boys pushed their way along beyond the engine, and presently the
fire itself burst upon their view in all its glory. It was a store,—one
of the stores of a block which extended along the whole street. The
front was of brick, and the walls between the different stores of the
block were also of brick, so that nothing but the inside and the roof
could burn. But the whole interior of the building was on fire, the
flames issuing from the windows, and rising in a great, bright, roaring
pyramid above the roof, far up into the dark sky. The whole street,
except exactly opposite to the fire, where it was too hot for persons to
stand, was filled with men whose faces, which were all turned towards
the fire, were so brightly illuminated by the light, that Rollo could
see them more distinctly than if it had been day. From the midst of a
dense crowd just beyond the fire, Rollo saw a slender white thread of
water mounting up in a beautiful curve, and falling over upon the
flames. It was the jet from an engine; but it seemed to produce no
effect upon the flame whatever.
“There is the hose,” said Jonas, suddenly.
Rollo turned away from the fire to look at the hose which Jonas pointed
out to him, lying upon the pavement. There were a great many persons
coming and going, so that he could not see very well; but he perceived a
long pipe of leather lying along the street, in a serpentine direction,
and swelled out with the water which the engine was driving through it,
as if it was just ready to burst.
“It looks like a snake,” said Rollo.
“Yes, and it hisses like a snake too,” replied Jonas.
Rollo listened, and he could just hear a hissing sound mingling with all
the other noises. He stepped out into the street to see how the hissing
sound was produced.
They found that at one of the joints of the hose there was a little
leak, and the water spouted from it in a stream, which, though it was
very small and slender, mounted as high as Rollo’s head. The light from
the fire shone so brightly upon this part of the street that Rollo could
see the operation very distinctly.
Jonas thought that it was not very safe for them to remain in the midst
of the road much longer; so they went back to the sidewalk, and then
began to move along towards the fire. The crowd was so dense that they
could not get along very well; but at last they came to a place where
they got up upon some steps, where they could see pretty well, only that
Rollo was not tall enough. There were many others standing upon the
steps, and Rollo could not see very well over their shoulders. There
was, however, a pretty high stone post at the top of the flight of
steps, and very near the house, where Jonas thought that perhaps Rollo
could sit, if he could get him up there. Rollo was afraid that the place
was not wide enough, for there was a ball upon the post, and he could
only sit upon that part of the top of the post which was upon one side
of the ball.
However, Rollo was so desirous of seeing them put out the fire, that he
concluded to try, and so Jonas helped him climb up. He found the place a
better one than he had expected. He clasped one hand around the ball,
and he rested the other upon Jonas’s shoulder and by this means he found
that he had a firm and comfortable seat; and the fire, with all the
operations connected with it, were in full view before him.
Just as he got established in his seat, he saw a stream from another
engine beginning to issue from its pipe, and to rise up towards the
building. The man who held the pipe stood upon the top of the engine,
and he held it in such a way as to direct it towards one of the upper
windows. Rollo could see the red flame through the window, as the
shutter had been burned, and all the glass had fallen away; and, now and
then, a great puff of flame would come out, when any momentary change in
the wind drove the fire in that direction. The stream of water went
directly in at the window. At first, it produced very little effect; but
presently he observed that it began to deaden the redness of the fire
just within the window. Rollo thought that this engine was far more
powerful than the one which he had noticed before. That still continued
to play around behind the building. Rollo occasionally got a glimpse of
other jets, coming from engines which were standing on that side.
Sometimes these jets came away over the top of the building, and Rollo
could see them broken into drops as their force was spent, but still
shooting forward through the flames in regular pulsations, produced by
the successive strokes of the engines from which they came.
By all these means, the fire was soon perceptibly diminished. The window
into which the engine was playing soon ceased to look red at all; and
presently Rollo saw a tall ladder rising slowly above the heads of the
crowd. The lower end of it was nearly under the window, which he had
been noticing, while the other end extended almost across the street,
and slowly rose. Rollo was expecting every moment to see it fall back
upon the heads of the people who were under it; but it did not. It
ascended slowly and steadily, until the upper end passed over, and fell
against the building, a little above the window. In a moment, a man
appeared at the foot, climbing up the rounds laboriously, as if he was
carrying up a burden which made him mount with difficulty. Rollo saw,
pretty soon, that he had an engine pipe in his hands; and presently he
observed that it was the same man whom he had seen before, holding the
pipe of the engine, and directing the stream into the window. The man
ascended slowly, dragging up the pipe, and the hose which was attached
to the bottom of it, until, at length, when the hose became so long that
he could not lift it any farther, another man took hold below, and
presently another; and at last there were four men at different parts of
the ladder, all lifting up the hose.
When the man at the top got the pipe up opposite to the window, he
pointed it in, and then Rollo could see him looking down, and
gesticulating very violently to those below. He seemed to be calling out
to them; but there was so much noise that Rollo could not hear what he
said. However, presently the man turned around towards the building
again, and seemed to be attending to his pipe, and Rollo could see that
the water was spouting through it very furiously into the building.
By this time, the fire had been so much deadened, by the various jets of
water which had been poured upon it from all sides, that the flames no
longer ascended above the roof, but, instead of flame, there was a tall
column of dense white smoke, illuminated by the embers which still
glowed below. Rollo and Jonas remained nearly half an hour, watching the
progress of the extinguishing of the fire; and then, as Rollo began to
feel his seat somewhat uncomfortable, they returned together to the
hotel. Rollo said he wondered that the other buildings did not take
fire; but Jonas told him that bricks were a pretty good non-conductor of
heat, and that, if the walls which divided such a block were of proper
thickness, one store was often burned out of the block, without setting
fire to the adjoining buildings.
QUESTIONS.
Under what circumstances did Rollo first hear the alarm of fire?
What did he observe in the street when he looked out the window?
What is a reservoir? How was the water conveyed from the reservoir
to the vicinity of the fire? Describe the successive steps of the
process by which the fire was extinguished. What did Jonas say in
regard to the reason why the fire was not communicated to the other
buildings of the block?