Life in the Red Brigade by Robert Michael Ballantyne (summer beach reads TXT) 📖

the window by which he had entered. All this the young fireman did with considerable energy and haste, because the density of the smoke was increasing, and his retreat might be cut off by the flames at any moment.

"Clear the way there!" he gasped, on reaching the window.

"All right," replied Bob Clazie, who was still presenting his branch with untiring energy at the flames.

Joe passed out, got on the head of the escape, and, holding the bundle on his shoulder with one hand, grasped the rounds of the ladder with the other. He descended amid the cheers of the vast multitude, which had by this time assembled to witness the fire.

As Joe hurried towards the open door of the nearest house, Betty, with the thumbs, rushed frantically out, screaming, "Missis! oh! my! she'll be burnt alive! gracious! help! fire! back room! first floor! oh, my!"

"Be easy, lass," cried Joe, catching the flying domestic firmly by the arm, and detaining her despite her struggles.

"Let me go; missis! I forgot her!"

"Here she is," cried Joe, interrupting, "all safe. You come and attend to her."

The reaction on poor Betty's feelings was so great that she went into fits a second time, and was carried with her mistress into the house, where the cook still lay in violent hysterics.

Joe laid the bundle gently on the bed, and looked quickly at the bystanders. Observing several cool and collected females among them, he pointed to the bundle, which had begun to exhibit symptoms of life, and said briefly, "She's all right, look after her," and vanished like a wreath of that smoke into which in another moment he plunged.

He was not a moment too soon, for he found Bob Clazie, despite his fortitude and resolution, on the point of abandoning the window, where the smoke had increased to such a degree as to render suffocation imminent.

"Can't stand it," gasped Bob, scrambling a few paces down the ladder.

"Give us the branch, Bob, I saw where it was in fetchin' out the old woman," said Joe in a stifled voice.

He grasped the copper tube from which the water spouted with such force as to cause it to quiver and recoil like a living thing, so that, being difficult to hold, it slipped aside and nearly fell. The misdirected water-spout went straight at the helmet of a policeman, which it knocked off with the apparent force of a cannon shot; plunged into the bosom of a stout collier, whom it washed whiter than he had ever been since the days of infancy, and scattered the multitude like chaff before the wind. Seeing this, the foreman ordered "Number 3" engine, (which supplied the particular branch in question), to cease pumping.

Joe recovered the erratic branch in a moment, and dragged it up the escape, Bob, who was now in a breatheable atmosphere, helping to pass up the hose. The foreman, who seemed to have acquired the power of being in several places at one and the same moment of time, and whose watchful eye was apparently everywhere, ordered Bob's brother David and another man named Ned Crashington, to go up and look after Joe Dashwood.

Meanwhile Joe shouted, "Down with Number 3;" by which he meant, "up with as much water as possible from Number 3, and as fast as you can!" and sprang into the room from which he had just rescued the old woman. In passing out with her he had observed a glimmer of flame through the door which he had first broken open, and which, he reflected while descending the escape, was just out of range of Bob Clazie's branch. It was the thought of this that had induced him to hurry back so promptly; in time, as we have seen, to relieve his comrade. He now pointed the branch at the precise spot, and hit that part of the fire right in its heart. The result was that clouds of steam mingled with the smoke. But Joe was human after all. The atmosphere, or, rather, the want of atmosphere, was too much for him. He was on the point of dropping the branch, and rushing to the window for his life, when Ned Crashington, feeling his way into the room, tumbled over him.

Speech was not required in the circumstances. Ned knew exactly what to do, and Joe knew that he had been sent to relieve him. He therefore delivered the branch to Ned, and at once sprang out on the escape, where he encountered David Clazie.

"Go in, Davy, he can't stand it long," gasped Joe.

"No fears of 'im," replied Davy, with a smile, as he prepared to enter the window; "Ned can stand hanythink a'most. But, I say, send up some more 'ands. It takes two on us to 'old _that_ 'ere branch, you know."

The brass helmets of more hands coming up the escape were observed as he spoke, for the foreman saw that this was a point of danger, and, like a wise general, had his reserves up in time.

David Clazie found Ned standing manfully to the branch. Ned was noted in the Red Brigade as a man who could "stand a'most anything," and who appeared to cherish a martyr-like desire to die by roasting or suffocation. This was the more surprising that he was not a boastful or excitable fellow, but a silent, melancholy, and stern man, who, except when in action, usually seemed to wish to avoid observation. Most of his comrades were puzzled by this compound of character, but some of them hinted that Crashington's wife could have thrown some light on the subject. Be this as it may, whenever the chief or the foreman of the Brigade wanted a man for any desperate work, they invariably turned to Ned Crashington. Not that Ned was one whit more courageous or willing to risk his life than any of the other men, _all_ of whom, it must be remembered, were picked for courage and capacity for their special work; but he combined the greatest amount of coolness with the utmost possible recklessness, besides being unusually powerful, so that he could be depended on for wise as well as desperate action. Joe Dashwood was thought to be almost equal to Ned--indeed, in personal activity he was superior; but there was nothing desperate in Joe's character. He was ever ready to dare anything with a sort of jovial alacrity, but he did not appear, like Ned, to court martyrdom.

While Ned and David subdued the flames above, Joe descended the escape, and being by that time almost exhausted, sat down to rest with several comrades who had endured the first shock of battle, while fresh men were sent to continue the fight.

"Have a glass, Joe?" said one of the firemen, coming round with a bottle of brandy.

"No, thank 'ee," said Joe, "I don't require it."

"Hand it here," said a man who stood leaning against the rails beside him, "my constitution is good, like the British one, but it's none the worse for a drop o' brandy after such tough work."

There was probably truth in what the man said. Desperate work sometimes necessitates a stimulant; nevertheless, there were men in the Red Brigade who did their desperate work on nothing stronger than water, and Joe was one of these.

In three hours the fire was subdued, and before noon of that day it was extinguished. The "report" of it, as published by the chief of the Fire-Brigade next morning, recorded that a house in Ladbroke Square, occupied by Mr Blank, a gentleman whose business was "private"--in other words, unknown--had been set on fire by some "unknown cause," that the whole tenement had been "burnt out" and "the roof off," and that the contents of the building were "insured in the Phoenix."

Some of the firemen were sent home about daybreak, when the flames first began to be mastered.

Joe was among these. He found Mary ready with a cup of hot coffee, and the rosebud, who had just awakened, ready with a kiss. Joe accepted the second, swallowed the first, stretched his huge frame with a sigh of weariness, remarked to Mary that he would turn in, and in five minutes thereafter was snoring profoundly.


CHAPTER THREE.

One pleasant afternoon in spring David Clazie and Ned Crashington sat smoking together in front of the fire in the lobby of the station, chatting of hair-breadth escapes by flood and fire.

"It's cold enough yet to make a fire a very pleasant comrade--w'en 'e's inside the bars," observed David.

"H'm," replied Crashington.

As this was not a satisfactory reply, David said so, and remarked, further, that Ned seemed to be in the blues.

"Wotever can be the matter wi' you, Ned," said David, looking at his companion with a perplexed air; "you're a young, smart, 'ealthy fellar, in a business quite to your mind, an' with a good-lookin' young wife at 'ome, not to mention a babby. W'y wot more would you 'ave, Ned? You didn't ought for to look blue."

"Pr'aps not," replied Ned, re-lighting his pipe, and puffing between sentences, "but a man may be in a business quite to his mind and have a good-looking wife, and a babby, and health to boot, without bein' exactly safe from an attack of the blues now and then, d'ye see? `It ain't all gold that glitters.' You've heard o' that proverb, no doubt?"

"Well, yes," replied Clazie.

"Ah. Then there's another sayin' which mayhap you've heard of too: `every man's got a skeleton in the cupboard.'"

"I've heard o' that likewise," said Clazie, "but it ain't true; leastways, _I_ have got no skeleton in none o' my cupboards, an', wot's more, if I 'ad, I'd pitch him overboard."

"But what if he was too strong for you?" suggested Ned.

"Why, then--I don't know," said Clazie, shaking his head.

Before this knotty point could be settled in a satisfactory manner, the comrades were interrupted by the entrance of a man. He was a thick-set, ill-favoured fellow, with garments of a disreputable appearance, and had a slouch that induced honest men to avoid his company. Nevertheless, Ned Crashington gave him a hearty "good afternoon," and shook hands.

"My brother-in-law, Clazie," said Ned, turning and introducing him, "Mr Sparks."

Clazie was about to say he "was 'appy to," etcetera, but thought better of it, and merely nodded as he turned to the grate and shook the ashes out of his pipe.

"You'll come and have a cup of tea, Phil? Maggie and I usually have it about this time."

Phil Sparks said he had no objection to tea, and left the station with Ned, leaving David Clazie shaking his head with a look of profound wisdom.

"You're a bad lot, you are," growled David, after the man was gone, "a werry bad lot, indeed!"

Having expressed his opinion to the clock, for there was no one else present, David thrust both hands into his pockets, and went out to take an observation of the weather.

Meanwhile Ned Crashington led his brother-in-law to his residence, which, like the abodes of the other firemen, was close at hand. Entering it he found his "skeleton" waiting for him in the shape of his wife. She was anything but a skeleton in aspect, being a stout, handsome woman, with a fine figure, an aquiline