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 bra.s.s columns, smooth as gla.s.s, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RESCUE FROM A FIFTH STORY.]

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 bl.u.s.ter 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body. 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 gla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT FULL SPEED.]

"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 quant.i.ty 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 bra.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e 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 n.o.body in a hurry. Plenty of time for tales of adventure, unless that gong takes to tapping.

And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder bra.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "INTO THIS STREET OF FIRE, BETWEEN THE TWO PIERS, STEAMED THE BIG FIRE-BOAT, STRAIGHT IN, WITH FOUR STREAMS PLAYING TO PORT AND FOUR TO STARBOARD, ALL DOING THEIR PRETTIEST."]

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 sh.o.r.eward, 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALLAGHER'S RESCUE OF A SWEDE FROM THE BURNING BARGE.]

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 pa.s.sing 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.ses 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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.