The Fireman

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_ I

WHEREIN WE SEE A SLEEPING VILLAGE SWEPT BY A RIVER OF FIRE AND THE BURNING OF A FAMOUS HOTEL

I WILL first tell a story, fresh in my memory, about a New Jersey village lost in the hills back of Lake Hopatcong, a charming, sleepy little village that reaches along a stream fringed with butterball-trees and looks contentedly out of its valley up the steep wooded hill that rises before it. Nobody in Glen Gardner cares much what there is in the world beyond that hill.

The general attitude of Glen Gardner toward progress is shown well enough by this, that the village could never see the use of a fire department. They never had one, and never proposed to; other people's houses might get on fire; theirs never did. As a matter of fact, nobody could remember when there had been a fire in Glen Gardner, unless it was Aunt Ann Fritts, who was eighty-eight years old, and remembered back farther than was necessary.

This was the case on a certain drizzling Sunday in March of the new-century year, when, at 6.30 A.M., the world beyond the hill intruded itself upon Glen Gardner's peacefulness in such strange and sudden fashion that old Mrs. Bergstresser collapsed from the shock. What made it worse was the fact that there had been a dance the night before at Farmer Apgar's, and half-past six found most of the village dozing comfortably. There was really nothing to do before church-time. So they all thought, at least, little suspecting that even now, as they slept, a long oil-train was puffing up the steep grade from Easton, bringing sixty cars loaded with crude petroleum and trouble.

On came the oil-train, its front engine panting as the drivers slipped, and the "pusher" back of the caboose shouldering up the load with snorts of impatience. Ouf! The front of the train climbs over the ridge at Hampton Junction, half a mile back of Glen Gardner, where the Jersey Central tracks reach their highest point. Now they are all right. There is a long down grade ahead for three miles. The pusher gives a final shove at the rear end, and cuts loose, glad to be rid of the job. The men in the caboose wave good-by to the fireman and engineer as they drop away.

Hello! What's that jerk? They look out and see the last oil-car just clearing the divide. It's nothing; they're over now; they're running faster. Queer place, this! There's a spring here with two streams that part in the middle like a woman's hair; one goes down the east side, the other down the west side. What? Broken in two?

The caboose crew start to run forward; a brakeman on the front half starts to run back. Thirty-seven cars behind the engine a coupling has snapped, and the train is taking the down grade in two sections: twenty-three loaded oil-cars are running away, and a million gallons of oil are chasing two million gallons down a mountain-side!

Everything now depends upon the brakeman on the forward section. He is the only man who can judge the danger, and signal the engineer what to do. The engineer does not even know that anything is wrong. It is plainly the brakeman's business to keep the front half of the train out of the way of the rear half. They must go faster, faster as the runaway cars gain on them. Any one can see that it is undesirable to have two million gallons of oil struck by a million gallons coming at forty miles an hour.

Yet the brakeman does the wrong thing (no man can be sure how he will act in imminent peril); the brakeman signals the engineer to stop. Perhaps he planned a gradual slow-up to block the flying section gently; perhaps he did not realize how fast the runaway was coming. Most likely he lost his head entirely, as better men have done in less serious crises. At any rate, the front section presently drew up with grinding brakes on the ledge of track that stretches along the cheek of the mountain just over the slope where the slumbering village lay, not five feet from Carling's warehouse, beyond which were the coal-yards and the wooden houses of Glen Gardner, the post-office, the hardware store, and the main street. Of all places for that train to stop, this was the worst.

It was a matter of seconds now until the crash came, and on this followed a shattering blast that shook the valley and hill, and brought the village to its feet in a daze of fear. Four oil-cars were smashed in the wreck and hurled across the tracks for the rear cars to pile up on. And straightway there was a gushing oil-well here, out of which in the first ten seconds came an explosion with the noise of cannon, that showered burning oil over fields and trees and shingled housetops, while a fire column shot up fifty feet in the air and began its fierce feeding on the broken tanks. And out of this fire fountain came a smoking fire river, that rolled down the hill toward the village.

At this moment, Joe Snyder, who had not gone to the dance the night before, and was doomed now to the early worm's fate, had just put his key in the door of the butcher-shop. He never turned the key, nor saw it again, nor saw the butcher-shop again. What he did see was a roaring torrent of oil sweeping down the street and blazing fifteen feet high as it came. And the picture next presented when Snyder, white as a ghost, raced down the sidewalk ahead of the fire, will stay long in the memory of those who saw it from their windows.

But this was no time for looking at pictures out of windows; there were other things to be done, and done quickly. Never did fire descend so swiftly upon a village. Even as the startled sleepers stared in fright, houses all about them burst into flames like candles on a Christmas tree. Now the warehouse is burning, and the sheds across the tracks; and there goes the hardware store; and there goes the carpenter's shop; and now the fire-stream rolls through Main Street, and licks up the Reeves house on one corner and Vliet's store on the other. Then the drug-store goes, and Carling's store and Rinehart's restaurant. Trees are burning, fences are burning, the very streets are burning, and men see fire rolling across their front yards like drifting snow.

I do not purpose to follow the incidents of this fire and the several explosions, nor show how the village fought against it vainly, damming up fiery oil-streams and turning their courses, toiling at bucket-lines, and spreading blistering walls with soaked carpets. The point is that these efforts alone would never have availed, and Glen Gardner would speedily have lain in ashes, had not fire-engines from Sommerville and Washington been hurried to the spot. And even as it was, a section of the village was wiped away in clean-licked ruins, which stood for many a day as a grim reminder that the only safety against fires in these times lies in being able to fight fires well.

Which brings me, of course, to the modern fire department and the men who risk their lives as a matter of daily routine to protect their fellow-men. I will begin with some incidents of one particular fire that happened in New York on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. It was a pleasant afternoon, and Fifth Avenue was crowded with people gathered to watch the parade. A gayer, pleasanter scene it would have been hard to find at three o'clock, or a sadder one at four.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, coming along with bands and banners, were nearing Forty-sixth Street, when suddenly there sounded hoarse shouts and the angry clang of fire-gongs, and down Forty-seventh Street came Hook and Ladder 4 on a dead run, and swung into Fifth Avenue straight at the pompous Hibernians, who immediately became badly scared Irishmen and took to their heels. But the big ladders went no farther. They were needed here, oh, so badly needed; for the Windsor Hotel was on fire--the famous Windsor Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. It was on fire, far gone with fire before ever the engines were called; and the reason was that everybody supposed that of course somebody had sent the alarm. And so they all watched the fire, and waited for the engines, ten, fifteen minutes, and by that time a great column of flame was roaring up the elevator-shaft, and people on the roof, in their madness, were jumping down to the street. Then some sane citizen went to a fire-box and rang the call, and within ninety seconds Engine 65 was on the ground. And after her came Engines 54 and 21. But there was no making up that lost fifteen minutes. The fire had things in its teeth now, and three, four, five alarms went out in quick succession. Twenty-three engines had their streams on that fire in almost as many minutes. And the big fire-tower came from Thirty-sixth Street and Ninth Avenue, and six hook-and-ladder companies came.

Let us watch Hook and Ladder 21 for a moment. She was the mate of the fire-tower, and the rush of her galloping horses was echoing up the avenue just as Battalion Chief John Binns made out a woman in a seventh-story window on the Forty-sixth Street side, where the fire was raging fiercely. The woman was holding a little dog in her arms, and it looked as if she was going to jump. The chief waved her to stay where she was, and, running toward 21 as she plunged along, motioned toward Forty-sixth Street. Whereupon the tiller-man at his back wheel did a pretty piece of steering, and even as they swung the long truck in the turn the crew began hoisting the big ladder. Such a thing is never done, for the swaying of that ten-ton mass might easily upset the truck; but every second counted here, and they took the chance.

As they drew along the curb, Fireman McDermott sprang up the slowly rising ladder, and two men came behind with scaling-ladders, for they saw that the main ladder would never reach the woman. Five stories is what it did reach, and then McDermott, standing on the top round, smashed one of the scaling-ladders through a sixth-story window, and climbed on, smashed the second scaling-ladder through a seventh-story window, and five seconds later had the woman in his arms.

To carry a woman down the front of a burning building on scaling-ladders is a matter of regular routine for a fireman, like jumping from a fourth story down to a net, or making a bridge of his body. It is part of the business. But to have one foot in the air reaching for the lower rung of a swaying, flimsy thing, and to feel another rung break under you and your struggling burden, and to fall two feet and catch safely, that is a thing not every fireman could do; but McDermott did it, and he brought the woman unharmed to the ground--and the dog, too.

Almost at the same moment, the crowd on Forty-seventh Street thrilled in admiration of a rescue feat even more perilous. On the roof, screaming in terror, was Kate Flannigan, a servant, swaying over the cornice, on the point of throwing herself down. Then out of a top-floor window crept a little fireman, and stood on the fire-escape, gasping for air. Then he reached in and dragged out an unconscious woman and lowered her to others, and was just starting down himself when yells from the street made him look up, and he saw Kate Flannigan. She was ten feet above him, and he had no means of reaching her.

The crowd watched anxiously, and saw the little fireman lean back over the fire-escape, saw him motion and shout something to the woman. And then she crept over the cornice edge, hung by her hands for a second, and dropped into the fireman's arms. It isn't every big strong man who could catch a sizable woman in a fall like that and hold her, but this stripling did it, because he had the nerve and knew how. And that made another life saved.

By this time flames were breaking out of every story from street to roof. It seemed impossible to go on with the rescue work; yet the men persisted, even on the Fifth Avenue front, bare of fire-escapes. They used the long extension ladders as far as they could, and then "scaled it" from window to window. Here it was that William Clark of Hook and Ladder 7 made the rescues that gave him the Bennett medal--took three women out of seventh-story windows when it was like climbing over furnace mouths to get there. And one of these women he reached only by working his way along narrow stone ledges for three windows, and back the same way to his ladder with the woman on his shoulders. Even so it is likely he would have failed in this last effort had not Edward Ford come part way along the ledges to meet and help him.

Meantime Fireman Kennedy of Engine 23 had rescued an old lady from the sixth floor; and Joseph Kratchovil of Hook and Ladder 2 had carried out Mrs. Leland, wife of the proprietor, from deadly peril on the fifth floor; and Frank Tissier of Hook and Ladder 4 had found a family named Wells--father, mother, and daughter--in a blazing room, and borne them out, with his own clothes burning, to the arms of Brennan and Sweeney, who were waiting for him in a fury of fire at the top of the eighty-five-foot extension ladder.

And Andrew Fitzgerald, also of Hook and Ladder 4, but off on sick-leave with pneumonia, had shown the true fireman spirit as he came from the doctors. His instructions were to go home and stay there. He was not on duty at all. He was scarcely strong enough to be out of bed, but when he heard that there were lives in peril down the avenue he forgot everything, and ran to the place of danger. There was need of him here, and, sick-leave or not, pneumonia or not, he would do what he could. What he did was to carry out the last ones taken alive from the ill-fated hotel--three women whom he bore in his arms from the fourth floor through roaring hallways, then up a fire-escape, then back into the building, with the flames singeing him, and a shattering blast of exploding gas pursuing him, and finally out on a balcony whence, with the help of Policeman Harrigan, he got them over safely to an adjoining housetop. No wonder the Bonner medal was awarded him later for conspicuous courage.

II

WHAT BILL BROWN DID IN THE GREAT TARRANT FIRE

THE great test for Fire-engine 29 and her crew, the test of life or death that firemen wait years for (to see what stuff is in them), came of a mild autumn afternoon, not soon to be forgotten by men who lunch down City Hall way, by men who swarm in the stone hives of Chambers Street and Greenwich Street and Washington Street. This was the day when innocent, wholesome chlorate of potash (excellent for colds) showed what it can do when you take it by the ton with a pinch of fire. This was the day of the great explosions, when it rained red-hot stones and blazing timbers, when whole blocks of lower Manhattan shivered with the concussion. This was Tarrant's day, October 29, 1900.

It all started smoothly enough, with brass gongs tapping out deliberate 62's, at which the big horses in most engine-houses stamped their displeasure, for 62 meant nothing to them--at least not on the first call. But it was great business for Harry and Nigger and Baby, the two blacks and the gray that pull old 29, and there they were at the first tap, breasting the rubber-bound stall chains as if to hurry up laggard electricity, which presently shot its sparks and loosed their fastenings.

Now, down drop the stall chains, and the horses, pounding over the tiles, crowd up three abreast ahead of the engine. Down drop the crew, silently, swiftly, sliding from ceiling to floor like so many blue-shirted ghosts. And click, click, its traces up and collars off the frames, and snap, snap, until the last hook holds.

"H'm," says Baby, as the thick wheels start, "six seconds; might have been worse."

"We'll strike the curb in eight and a half!" snorts Nigger, as the doors swing wide and they bang into Chambers Street.

Out into Chambers Street they go, with Johnnie Marks driving and Bill Brown jamming blazing waste into her fire-box, where wood and oil do the rest. On the back steps rides Captain Devanny, steadying himself by the coal-box, scowling under his helmet, and jerking fast on the alarm-cord as they swing into Greenwich Street. There is the fire just ahead, corner of Warren Street, nasty black smoke choking back the crowd. And here comes the hose-wagon, clanging and rumbling at their heels.

"It's first water for us, Bill," said Devanny.

"There's drugs and stuff in there," said Bill.

Then they fell to work--as firemen do.

"When the first explosion came," said Captain Devanny, telling the story weeks afterward, "I was inside the building, up one flight, at the bottom of a well of fire. McArthur and Buckley were with me, playing a stiff stream to protect the back windows. There's where people in the building had to run to, men and girls; we could see 'em crowding on the balconies over Bishop's Alley, and we wanted to give 'em a chance on the fire-escapes. You see, a red-hot ladder isn't much use to anybody.

"Well, they got down, every soul of 'em, but by that time big chunks of fire were dropping all around us, and our helmets were crumpling and our clothes were burning. Besides that, we kept hearing little explosions overhead, louder than the fire crackle, louder than pistol shots, and when you hear those in a drug-house you don't feel any too good. I went to the front, and saw fire breaking out everywhere on the fourth and fifth floors. Then I knew it was all up, and ran back to order the boys out. On the stairs I met Gillon, and was just yelling, 'Save yourselves!' when the crash came. It was like cannon, sir, and sounded bzzzzzzzz in my ears for a long time, as I lay in the wreck, with tongues of blue flames licking down over me. I'd been blown clean off the second-floor landing and dropped in the hallway, twenty feet back from the door. McArthur and Gillon were down the elevator shaft, where they'd jumped. Nobody dared lift a head, for a cyclone of fire was all over us."

It is not my purpose to detail the sufferings and final rescue of these flame-bound men. They had some vivid glimpses of death and some cruel burns, but firemen count these nothing, nor is McArthur's act in turning back through fire to save a fallen comrade (Merron) more than ordinary fireman's pluck, nor is Devanny's experience when caught in the second explosion and blown through a shop on Washington Street more than an ordinary hazard of the business. Indeed, this Tarrant fire should have but little of my attention were there not something in it beyond noise and house-smashing. There was this thing in it, overlooked by newspaper reports, yet vastly important, the behavior of Bill Brown, to whom, as a representative, one may say, of engine crew 29, came the great test I spoke of, the rare test which nothing but the highest courage can satisfy. All firemen have courage, but it cannot be known until the test how many have this particular kind--Bill Brown's kind.

And the odd part of it is that what he did seems a little thing, and it took only a minute to do, and it saved no life and made no difference whatever in the outcome of the fire, yet to the few who know--or care--it stands in the memories of the department as a fine and unusual bit of heroism.

What happened was this: Engine 29, pumping and pounding her prettiest, stood at the northwest corner of Greenwich and Warren streets, so close to the blazing drug-house that Driver Marks thought it wasn't safe there for the three horses, and led them away. That was fortunate, but it left Brown alone, right against the cheek of the fire, watching his boiler, stoking in coal, keeping his steam-gage at 75. As the fire gained chunks of red-hot sandstone began to smash down on the engine. Brown ran his pressure up to 80, and watched the door anxiously where the boys had gone in.

Then the explosion came, and a blue flame, wide as a house, curled its tongues half-way across the street, enwrapping engine and man, setting fire to the elevated railway station overhead, or such wreck of it as the shock had left. Bill Brown stood by his engine, with a wall of fire before him and a sheet of fire above him. He heard quick footsteps on the pavements, and voices, that grew fainter and fainter, crying: "Run for your lives!" He heard the hose-wagon horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging away, mad with fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, and the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, and neck. Only a fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain over the bared surfaces was--well, there is no pain worse than that of fire scorching in upon the quick flesh seared by fire.

Here, I think, was a crisis to make a very brave man quail. Bill Brown knew perfectly well why every one was running; there was going to be another explosion in a couple of minutes, maybe sooner, out of this hell in front of him. And the order had come for every man to save himself, and every man had done it, except the lads inside. And the question was, Should he run or should he stay and die? It was tolerably certain that he would die if he stayed. On the other hand, the boys of old 29 were in there. Devanny and McArthur, and Gillon and Merron, his friends, his chums: he'd seen them drag the hose in through that door--there it was now, a long, throbbing snake of it--and they hadn't come out. Perhaps they were dead. Yes, but perhaps they weren't. If they were alive, they needed water now more than they ever needed anything before. And they couldn't get water if he quit his engine.

Bill Brown pondered this a long time, perhaps four seconds; then he fell to stoking in coal, and he screwed her up another notch, and he eased her running parts with the oiler. Explosion or not, pain or not, alone or not, he was going to stay and make that engine hum. He had done the greatest thing a man can do--had offered his life for his friends.

It is pleasant to know that this sacrifice was averted. A quarter of a minute or so before the second and terrible explosion, Devanny and his men came staggering from the building. Then it was that Merron fell, and McArthur checked his flight to save him. Then it was, but not until then, that Bill Brown left Engine 29 to her fate (she was crushed by the falling walls), and ran for his life with his comrades. He had waited for them, he had stood the great test.

It were easy to multiply stories of the firemen, stories of the captains, stories of the chiefs--there is no end to them. However many may be told or written, they are but fragments of fragments. New York has one hundred and thirty-six engine companies, forty hook-and-ladder companies, besides the volunteers on Staten Island, and there is not one of these but has its proud record of courage and self-sacrifice. Other lives show bravery for gain, bravery for show, bravery for sport; these show bravery for the public good and for no other reason--unselfish bravery. Think what the firemen do! They give up regular sleep, they give up home life, they bear every exposure, they face death in many forms as a matter of daily routine, they never refuse an order, lead where it may (such a case is practically unknown), and they do all this for modest pay and scant glory. Three or four dollars a day will cover their earnings, and as for the glory, what is it? For some a medal, a tattered paper with roll-of-honor mention, a picture in the newspapers; for most of them nothing. Yet they are cheerful, happy men. Why? I have wondered about this.

Shall we think of firemen as braver than other men, as finer or more devoted? No and yes. I should say that most of them, to start with, had no such superiority, but came into the department (usually by opportunity or drift) out of unpromising conditions, came in quite as selfish and timorous, quite as human as the ordinary citizens. And the life did the rest. The life changed them, made them braver and better. Why? Because it is a brave, unselfish life, and no man can resist it. Put a convict in the fire department and he will become an honest man--or leave. It's like changing scamps into heroes on the battle-field, only these battles of hose and ax are all righteous battles to save life, to avert loss and suffering. In the whole business of fighting fires there is no place for a mean or a base motive, and can be none. Therefore, meanness and baseness go out of fashion just as whining goes out of fashion on a football team. It's the fashion among firemen to do fine things.

Let me give a further instance to show what this fire department fashion does for men at the very top--for battalion chiefs and deputy chiefs and the chief himself. It swings them into line like men in the ranks. With the chance to work less, they find themselves working harder. With orders to take from no one, they assume voluntarily a severer duty than any man would put upon them. And this even if power has come through the way of politics, through influence or scheming. Let the most spoils-soaked veteran become chief of a city fire department and I believe we should see him, in spite of himself, forgetting his pocket-stuffing principles, and seeking the heroic goal, though it kill him. Which it probably would. As a matter of fact, New York has never had a chief who did not work harder than his men, and spare himself less than he spared his men.

Take our present chief, Edward F. Croker, the youngest man who ever held this place. Let me run over his twenty-four hours, from eight in the evening, when he goes on night duty at the Great Jones Street engine-house. From now until daylight he will cover personally some two hundred stations on the first alarm--that is, everything from Twenty-third Street to the Battery, the region of greatest danger. And on the second or third alarm he will cover the whole of Manhattan Island. That means answering every night from two to a dozen calls scattered over a great area. It means a pair of horses (Dan and John, usually) and driver clean worn out when morning comes. And it means to the chief, besides physical fatigue, an exhausting responsibility in quickly judging each fire and outlining the way of fighting it.

Almost a day's work this, one would say, but it is only a beginning. However broken his rest, the chief is up at seven in the morning--and note that what sleep he gets, three, four, five hours, is at an engine-house, not at his home--and by nine he is at headquarters, in Sixty-seventh Street, ready for a hard morning transacting business for the department, doing as much work as a merchant in his counting-room. This until one o'clock.

Then no luncheon (all fire chiefs are two-meal men), but off for a four-hours' spin behind Kitty and Belle, his daylight team, driving from station to station for the work of inspection, holding the reins himself for arm exercise, seeing with his own eyes how the work is going, holding every man to his duty. Studying the city, too, as he goes about, noting its growth and changes from the view-point of a fire expert, detecting weak points, bad streets, defective structures, fixing in mind the danger spots, here oil, there lumber, yonder paint or chemicals, and planning always for the defense.

After this inspection tour comes the only time in the day when the chief is not on duty, an hour and a half or two hours, when he gets a glimpse of his family and eats his dinner. Even then the fire buggy waits outside, and many a time this brief home stay is cut short and off goes the chief, dropping knife and fork, to answer a third alarm. There is some perversity about fires, so his wife and children think, that makes more of them start between six and eight in the evening (this is really a fact) than at any other period of the day.

So here we have a chief who actually holds himself ready for hardest service twenty-two hours in every twenty-four, who seldom knows a night's unbroken rest, who never takes a day off--not even Sundays or holidays, but uses these for longer inspection tours, driving forty or fifty miles of a Christmas day over Long Island or out into Queens County, or up through the Westchester region.

And he is never ill, and he never complains!

To watch the chief at a big fire is a thing worth doing, though not easy to do, for he moves about constantly, up-stairs and down-stairs, from roof to roof, from engine to engine, in danger like his men, not sending his orders merely, but following after to observe their execution. "I expect each of my captains," he told me one day, "to know the location and general condition of every alleyway, every stairway, every hydrant, every fire-escape in his section. When I get to a fire the captain must tell me what I want to know, and do it quick. Will we find water in there behind the smoke? Is there a back door at the end of that passage? How about the balconies? Where does this lane between the houses come out? And a dozen other things. If you want to fight fires well you must know the ground as if you lived on it."

III

HERE WE VISIT AN ENGINE-HOUSE AT NIGHT AND CHAT WITH THE DRIVER

THERE is something strange and solemn about an engine-house at night, like the stillness of a church or the hush of a drowsing menagerie. You are filled with a sense of impending danger, which is symbolized everywhere: in the boots ranged at bunk-sides of sighing sleepers, in the brass columns, smooth as glass, that reach up through manholes in the floor, and at which the fire crew leap, half drunk with fatigue; in the engine, purring at the double doors (steam always at 25 in the boiler), with tongues and harness lifted for the spring; in the big gong which watches under the clock (and the clock watches, too), a tireless yellow eye, that seems to be ever saying, "Shall I strike? Shall I strike?" And the clock ticks back, "Wait, wait," or "Now, now." That is what you feel chiefly in an engine-house at night--the intense, quiet watchfulness. Even the horses seem to be watching with the corner of an eye as they munch their feed.

I counsel a man, perhaps a woman, weary of the old evening things, the stupid show, the trivial talk, the laughter without mirth, the suppers without nourishment, to try an hour or two at an engine-house, making friends with the fireman on guard (it may be the driver of a chief, as happened to me), and see if he doesn't walk back home with a gladder heart and a better opinion of his fellows. I fancy some of our reformers, even, might visit an engine-house with profit, and learn to dwell occasionally on the good that is in our cities and learn something about fighting without bluster and without ever letting up.

It was a tall, loose-jointed fellow I met at the Elm Street station, a typical down-easter, who had wandered over the world and finally settled down as driver of the nervous little wagon that carries Chief Ahearn, a daring man and famous, in his dashes from fire to fire over the city. In these days of idol-breaking it is good to see such hero worship as one finds here for all men who deserve it, whether in humble station or near the top, like this wiry little chief, asleep now up-stairs against the night's emergencies. Ask any fireman in New York to tell you about Ahearn, and you'll find there is one business where jealousy doesn't rule. Ahearn? What do they think of Ahearn? Why, he's a wonder, sir; he's the dandiest man. Say, did ye ever hear how he crawled under that blazing naphtha tank and got a man out who was in there unconscious? They gave him the Bennett medal for that. And d' ye know about the rescue he made up in Williamsbridge, when that barrel of kerosene exploded? Oh, but the prettiest thing Ahearn ever did was-- Then each man will tell you a different thing.

The driver's favorite story was of the night when Ahearn ran back into a burning tenement on Delancey Street, "where nobody had any business to go, sir, the fire was that fierce." It was fine to see his face light up as he told what his chief did on this occasion, and the whole quiet engine-house seemed to throb with pride.

"You see," he went on, "there was a half-crazy mother screaming around that her baby was in the building. As a matter of fact, the baby was all right--some neighbors had it--but the mother didn't know that, and the chief didn't know it, either. He was chief of the 4th Battalion then; now he's deputy chief--been promoted, y' know. Chief or not didn't cut any ice with him, and he just wrapped a coat around his head and went in. He got to the room all right where the woman said her baby was, and it was like a furnace; so he did the only thing a man can do--got down low on his hands and knees and worked along toward the bed, with his mouth against the floor, sucking in air. He went through fire, sir, that nearly burned his head off--it did burn off the rims of his ears--but he got to that bed somehow, and then he found he'd done it all for nothing. There wasn't any baby there to save.

"But there was a chief to save now. He was about gone when he got back to the door, and there he found that a spring-lock had snapped shut on him, and he was a prisoner, sir--a prisoner in a stove. He didn't have any strength left, poor old chief; he couldn't breathe, let alone batter down doors, and we'd had some choice mourning around here inside of a minute if the lads of Hook and Ladder 18 hadn't smashed in after him. They thought he'd looked for that baby about long enough. The last thing he did was to kick his foot through a panel, and they found him there unconscious, with his rubber boot sticking out into the hall.

"Tell ye another thing the chief did," continued the driver. "He rescued a husband and wife in the Hotel Jefferson, out of a seventh-story window, when the whole business was roaring with fire. That's only about a month ago; it was a mighty sad case. We had three people to save, if we could, and two of 'em sick--the husband and wife--and the third was a trained nurse taking care of 'em. Shows how people get rattled in a fire. Why, if they'd only kept their hall door shut--well, they didn't, and there they were, all three at the window, without hardly any clothes on, and the flames close behind 'em.

"We got up on the top floor of the Union Square Hotel, the chief and I, about ten feet away along the same wall, and by leaning out of our windows we could tell 'em what to do. It was a case of ropes and swing across to us, but it isn't every man can make a rope fast right when a fire is hurrying him, especially a sick man, or mebbe it was a poor rope he had. Anyhow, when the nurse came out of that window, you might say tumbled out (you see, they made her go first), she just fell like that much dead weight, scared, you know, and when the rope tightened it snapped, and down she went, seven stories--killed her bang.

"The chief saw that would never do, so we went up on the roof and threw over more rope. It was clothes-line, the only thing handy, but I doubled it to make sure. And with that we got the husband and wife across all safe, for now, you see, we could lift 'em out easy, without such a terrible jerk on the rope. That was the chief's idea."

"Yes," said I, "but you helped. What's your name?"

"No, no," he smiled; "never mind me. I'm nobody. Let the chief have it all." And then he went on with the story, which interested me mainly as showing the kind of loyalty one finds among these firemen. Each man will tell of another man's achievements, not of his own. You could never find out what Bill Brown did from Brown himself.

The clock ticked on, some service calls rang on the telephone, and once the driver bounded up in the middle of a word and stood with coat half off, in strained attention, counting the strokes of the gong. No, it wasn't for them. They'd go, though, on the second call. Second calls usually came within twenty minutes of the first, so we'd soon see. Meantime, he told me about a fireman known as "Crazy" Banta.

"Talk about daredevils!" said he, "this man Banta beat the town. Why, I've known him to go up on a house with a line of men where they had to cross the ridge of a slate roof--you know, where the two sides slant up to a point. Well, the other men would straddle along careful, one leg on each side, but when Banta came he'd walk across straight up, just like he was down on the street. That's why we called him 'Crazy'--he'd do such crazy things.

"And funny? Well, sir, he'd swaller quarters as fast as you'd give 'em to him, and let you punch him in the stomach and hear 'em rattle around. Then he'd light a match, open his mouth, put the match 'way inside, and let you watch the quarters come up again. Had a double stomach, or something. He could swaller canes, too, same as a circus man. Said he'd learned all his tricks over in India, but some of the boys thought he lied. They said he'd prob'ly traveled with some show. He used to tell us how he could speak Burmese and Siamese and Hindu, all those lingoes, just perfect; so one day a battalion chief called his bluff when there were a lot of emigrants from those parts down at the Battery, and blamed if Banta didn't chin away to the whole crowd of 'em; you'd thought he was their long-lost brother. Was he a foreigner? No, sir; he was born in Hohokus, N. J.

"But the time Banta fixed his reputation all right was at a fire in Pell Street--some factory. After that he might have told us he could fly or eat glass or any old thing, and we'd have believed him. Tell ye what he did. This factory all smashed in after she'd burned a while, and one of the boys--Dave Soden--got wedged under the second floor, with all the other floors piled on top of him. It was a great big criss-cross of timbers, with Dave at the bottom, and the flames eating in fast. We could see the whole thing was going to make a fine bonfire in about three minutes, and it looked as if Dave would be in it.

"You understand, we didn't dare pry up the timbers, for that would have brought the whole factory down on Dave and killed him plumb. And we couldn't begin at the top and throw off the timbers, for there wasn't any time. We didn't know what to do, but Banta he did. He grabbed up a saw, and said he'd crawl in and get Dave out. And, by thunder! he did. He just wriggled in and out like a snake through those timbers, and when he got to Dave he sawed off the end of a beam that held him and then dragged him out. He took big chances, for, you see, if he'd sawed off the wrong beam it might have brought down the whole business on both of them. But Banta he knew how to do it. Oh, he was a wonder! They gave him the medal for that, and promoted him. Say, you'd never guess how he ended up?"

"How?" I asked.

"Got hit by a cable-car; yes, sir. Hurt so bad they retired him. What d' ye think of that? Not afraid of the devil, and done up by a measly cable-car!"

IV

FAMOUS RESCUES BY NEW YORK FIRE-BOATS FROM RED-HOT OCEAN LINERS

AFTER all has been said that may be about our admirable fire-engines, and endless stories have been told of gallant fights made by the engine lads for life and property, there remains this fact: that New York possesses a far more formidable weapon against fires than the plucky little "steamers" that go clanging and tooting about our streets. The fire-boat is as much superior to the familiar fire-engine as a rapid-fire cannon is superior to a rifle. A single fire-boat like the New-Yorker will throw as much water in a given time as twenty ordinary fire-engines: it will throw twelve thousand gallons in a minute--that is, fifty tons; or, if we imagine this great quantity of water changed into a rope of ice, say an inch thick, it would reach twenty miles.

Suppose we go aboard her now, this admirable New-Yorker, and look about a little. People come a long way to see her, for she's the largest and finest fire-boat in the world. Pretty, isn't she? All brass and hard wood and electric lights, everything shining like a pleasure-yacht. Looks like a gunboat with rows of cannon all around her--queer, stumpy little cannon, that have wheels above their mouths. Those are hose connections, like hydrants in a city, where they screw fast the rubber lines. She has twenty-one on a side; that makes forty-two "gates," as the engineer calls them, without counting four monitors aloft--those things on the pilot-house that look like telescopes with long red tails. It was the monitors, especially "Big Daddy," that did such great work against those North German Lloyders, in their drift down the river, in 1900, with decks ablaze and red-hot iron hulls. We shall hear all about that day if we sit us down quietly in the fire quarters ashore and get the crew started.

Stepping over-side again, here we are in the home of the fire-boat crew. It's more like a club than an engine-house. No horses stamping about, no stable; but pictures on the walls, and men playing cribbage or reading, and nobody in a hurry. Plenty of time for tales of adventure, unless that gong takes to tapping.

And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder brass column from the sleeping-rooms. He's the lad who did fine things in that great fire at the Mallory pier--saved a man's life and made the roll of honor by it. We'll never get the story from him, but the other boys will tell us.

If ever fire-boats proved their value, it was that night in May, 1900, when Pier 19, East River, caught fire, with all its length of inflammable freight. Close to three o'clock in the morning it was, and a hurricane from the northeast was driving the flames toward land. Before the engines could start, a fire-wave had leaped across South Street and was raging down the block. And another fire-wave had leaped across the dock between Pier 19 and Pier 20, setting fire to a dozen barges and lighters moored there, and to the steamship Neuces of the Mallory line. And presently all these were blazing, some with cargoes of cotton and oil, blazing until the lower end of the island looked out of the night in ghastly illumination, a terrible picture in red and black. They say it was bright enough that night half a mile away for a man to pick up a pin.

There is no harder problem for the engines than these fierce-driven water-front fires that sweep in suddenly shoreward, for they must be taken head on, with all the smoke in the firemen's faces, and water often lacking, strange to say, although the river is so near. For the fire-boats, however, the advantage is the other way; they attack from the rear, where they see what they are doing, and can pump from a whole ocean. Besides that, they attack with so formidable a battery that no hook-and-ladder corps is needed to "break open" for them. The three-inch stream from Big Daddy alone will tear off roofs and rip out beams like the play of artillery; and if that is not sufficient, the boys have only to hitch on the four-and-a-half-inch nozzle and set the two pumps feeding it five thousand gallons a minute, or twenty tons of water. Under that shock there is no wall built of brick and mortar that will not crumble.

When the New-Yorker came up on this memorable night the fifth alarm had sounded and things were looking serious. Piers 19 and 20 were in full flame, and every floating thing between them. Into this street of fire steamed the big fire-boat, straight in, with four streams playing to port and four to starboard, all doing their prettiest. She went ahead slowly, fighting back the flames foot by foot, on pier and steamship and kindling small craft that drifted by in fiery procession. And the air in the men's faces was like the breath of a furnace!

Here it was that Gallagher won his place on the roll of honor in this wise. For some time they had heard shouts that were lost in the din of conflagration; but presently they made them out as a warning from somebody somewhere that a man was on a burning barge just passing them. It seemed incredible that a man could be there, alive and silent; but, with the spirit of his trade, Gallagher determined to see if it were true: he would board the barge anyhow; and as the New-Yorker swung close alongside, he sprang down to her deck, where things were a good deal warmer than is necessary for a man's health. And as he leaped, John Kerrigan, at the steering-wheel of Big Daddy, turned its mighty stream against the barge, keeping it just over Gallagher's head, so that the spray drenched down upon him while the stream itself smote a path ahead through the fire.

Down this path went Gallagher, searching for a man, avoiding pitfalls of smoke and treacherous timbers, confident that Kerrigan would hold the flames back, yet see to it that the terrible battering-ram of water did not strike him--for to be struck with the full force of Big Daddy's stream is like being pounded by a trip-hammer.

Gallagher reached the cabin door, found it locked, put his back against it and smashed it in. Then he went on, groping, choking, feeling his way, searching for his man. And at last on one of the bunks he found him, stretched out in a stupor of sleep or drowsed by the stifle of gases. The man was a Swede named Thomas Bund, and he came out of that cabin on Gallagher's back, came off that burning barge on Gallagher's back, and if he does not bless the name of Gallagher all his days, then there is no gratitude in Sweden.

Here we see the kind of service the fire-boats render. On this night they saved the situation and a million dollars besides; they worked against a blazing steamship, against blazing piers, against blazing runaways; worked for eleven hours, until the last smolder of fire had been drowned under thirty thousand tons of water. And not a year passes but they do something of like sort. Now it is a steamship, say the ill-starred Leona, that comes up the bay with a cargo of cotton burning between decks. The New-Yorker makes short work of her. Again it is a blazing lumber district along the river, like the great McClave yards, where the fire-boats fought for eight days and nights before they gained the victory. But they did gain it. Or it may be a fire back from the river, like the Tarrant horror, where the land engines, sore pressed, welcome far-carried streams from the fire-boats as help that may turn the balance.

"Why, this fire-boat's only ten years old, sir," said Captain Braisted, "and she's saved more than she cost every year we've had her." Then he added, as his eyes dwelt proudly on the trim craft purring at her dock-side: "And she cost a tidy sum, too."

Let us come now to that placid summer afternoon, to that terrible Saturday, June 30, 1900, when tug-boats in the North River looked upon a fire the like of which the river had never known and may not know again. They looked from a distance, we may be sure, these tug-boats; for when a great liner swings down-stream, a roaring, red-hot furnace, it is time for wooden-deck craft to scurry out of the way. And here were three liners in such case, the Bremen, the Saale, and the Main, all burning furiously and beyond human help, one would say, for their iron hulls were vast fire-traps, with port-holes too small for rescue, and the decks swept with flame. It was hard to know that back of those steep sides were men in anguish, held like prisoners in a fortress of glowing steel that sizzled as it drifted--three fortresses of glowing steel.

Then up steamed the New-Yorker and the Van Wyck, with men behind fire-shields against the blistering scorch and glare, with monitors and rail-pipes spurting out all that the pumps could send. The New-Yorker took the Bremen, the Van Wyck took the Saale; and there they lay for hours, close on the edge of the fire, like a pair of salamanders, engines throbbing, pumps pounding, pilots at the wheel watching every movement of the liners, following foot by foot, drawing in closer when they gained on the fire, holding away a shade when the fire gained on them, fighting every minute.

"It's queer," said Captain Braisted, "but when you play a broadside of heavy streams on a vessel's side, say at fifty feet, there's a strong recoil that keeps driving the fire-boat back. It's as if you were pushing off all the time with poles instead of water. And you have to keep closing in with the engines."

"How near did you get to the Bremen?" I asked.

"Oh, we finally got right up against her, say after forty-five minutes. You can cool off a lot of red-hot iron in forty-five minutes when you've got forty-five tons of water a minute to do it with."

It was just as they came alongside that one of the crew made out a human shape in the coal-chute some ten feet up the Bremen's side. And presently they saw others there, blackened faces, fierce and fearful eyes. And above the fire crackle and the crash of water they heard men's cries.

Straightway a ladder was brought, and three of the crew, Breen, Kerrigan, and Hartmann, lifted it on their shoulders until the top rung came up level with the coal-chute. But this, instead of bringing relief to the fire-bound company, brought madness; for now they fought and struggled so, each one wishing to go first, that none were able to go at all. "They were like wild beasts," said one of the crew.

In this crisis Gallagher sprang up the ladder to the top, where he could look in through the hole, the one hole in all the vessel's sides that was large enough for a man's body to pass. And reaching in here, he grabbed what was nearest, arm, leg, or shock of hair, and hauled it out and lowered it down the ladder to Captain Braisted, who stood below him and passed the bundle on. Then Gallagher grabbed again and again, pulling forth by sheer strength one man at a time, taking them as they came, Germans or Italians, officers or coal-handlers, anything that was alive. Down came the tumbling mass, yelling, praying, fighting, a miserable human stream; and when it was all over and the count was taken, they had saved thirty-two lives.

Now one of the rescued men spoke up in broken English, and said that there were others still on the Bremen, down in the engine-room. And Gallagher volunteered to go aboard for the rescue if one of the men who knew the vessel would come along to guide him. But no man offered this service. It was too hazardous a thing, they said; where the fire was not raging there was smoke and darkness, and the engine-room was far down in the vessel. They had groped about themselves for half an hour in despair, searching for the way out, and now that they had found it, they were not fools enough to go in again.

"But you say there are others in there alive!" insisted Gallagher.

The rescued ones shook their heads blankly at this; in their minds the law of self-preservation rode over all other things at this moment. Poor men, they were half dazed by their sufferings and the shock!

"All right," cried Gallagher; "I'll go in and find 'em without any guide. Hold the ladder, boys."

And up he went!

"I'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and without more words these two climbed in through the coal-chute and started down the black, hot, stifling ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got there safely, and found eight men still alive, all Germans, engineers and their assistants. But when the firemen called to them to hurry out for their lives, they refused to move. Their duty was with their engines, said they; they had to run the engines; they were much obliged to the American gentlemen, but they could not leave their post.

Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their ears.

"But you will die!" they urged.

The Germans thought it very likely; still they could not leave.

"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; you will be burned to death."

The Germans understood perfectly: they would be burned to death at their engines; and as they were all of this mind and not to be shaken, the firemen could only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, but at last their good star prevailed, and they came without harm to their comrades, who listened in wonder to the news they brought. It seemed such utter folly, the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, yet there was something almost splendid in their stubborn devotion to duty. Quietly they had looked death in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not flinched; and days later, when the steamer had burned herself out and lay grounded in the mud, cold and black, the wreckers found these faithful though mistaken men still at their posts, still by their engines, where they had waited in spite of everything--where they had perished.

All this time the Van Wyck had been working on the Saale, but in a harder fight, for the flames raged here as fiercely as on the Bremen, while the smaller fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five tons of water a minute, which was not enough.

So, now, when all had been done that could be for the Bremen, orders came that the New-Yorker, too, turn her streams against the Saale, and a little later the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the unhappy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing island, and presently grounded by the bow on the Communipaw mud-flats, and rested there for the last agony.

The story of those tragic hours is not for telling now. There were more heroic rescues. There were brave attempts at rescue that availed nothing. The fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roaring about them and water up to their knees surging past like a mill-race; it was the return torrent from their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern settled and the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. In a large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman gave a noble picture of resignation in the face of an awful death. Hemmed in there between fire and water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads for cups of water passed in through the port-hole, and waved "good-by" as the stern gave a final lurch and went down.

Nor does this end the record of that day, for there was still the Main to fight for, and at eleven o'clock that night the New-Yorker steamed up the river and caught the third liner as the flood-tide bore her stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She had been blazing for eight hours, and was red-hot now from the water-line up. It seemed incredible that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they went to work in the old way, and within an hour had dragged out through the coal-hole a blackened and frightened company, more than a score of boiler-cleaners and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through those fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest bunkers far below the water-level.

After this the fire-boats did other things. _

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