Fighting the Flames by R. M. Ballantyne (rooftoppers .TXT) 📖

a gasfitter and find it out. But more particularly don’t try to find it yerself with a candle. Och! if ye’d only seen the blows up as I’ve seen from gas, ye’d look better arter it. Not more nor two weeks gone by, ma’am, we was called to attend a fire which was caused by an escape o’ gas. W’en we got there the fire was out, but sitch a mess you niver did see. It was a house, ma’am, in the West End, with the most illigant painted walls and cornices and gimcracks, idged all with goold. The family had just got into it—noo done up for ’em, only, by good luck, there wasn’t much o’ the furnitur’ in. They had smelled a horrid smell o’ gas for a good while, but couldn’t find it. At last the missis, she goes with a workman an a candle to look for it, an’ sure enough they found it in a bathroom. It had been escapin’ in a small closet at the end o’ the bath, and not bein’ able to git out, for the door was a tight fit, it had gone away an’ filled all the space between the ceilin’s an’ floors, an’ between the lath, and plaster, and the walls. The moment the door in the bath-room was opened all this gas took light an’ blowed up like gunpowder. The whole inner skin o’ the beautiful drawing-room, ma’am, was blowed into the middle of the room. The cook, who was in the drawin’-room passage, she was blow’d down stairs; the workman as opened the little door, he was blow’d flat on his back; an’ the missis, as was standin’ with her back to a door, she was lifted off her legs and blow’d right through the doorway into a bedroom.”

“Gracious!” exclaimed the horrified Mrs Denman, “was she killed?”

“No, ma’am, she warn’t killed. Be good luck they was only stunned an’ dreadful skeared, but no bones was broken.”

Mrs Denman found relief in a sigh.

“Well, ma’am,” continued Joe, “let me advise you to sweep yer chimleys once a month. When your chimley gets afire the sparks they get out, and when sparks get out of a windy night there’s no tellin’ what they won’t light up. It’s my opinion, ma’am, that them as makes the laws should more nor double the fines for chimleys goin’ afire. But suppose, ma’am, your house gets alight in spite of you—well then, the question is what’s best to do?”

Mrs Denman nodded her old head six or seven times, as though to say, “That is precisely the question.”

“I’ll tell you, ma’am,”—here Joe held up the fore-finger of his right hand impressively. “In the first place, every one in a house ought to know all the outs and ins of it, ’cause if you’ve got to look for things for the first time when the cry of ‘Fire’ is raised, it’s not likely that you’ll find ’em. Now, d’ye know, or do the servants know, or does anybody in the house know, where the trap in the roof is?”

Mrs Denman appeared to meditate for a minute, and then said that she was not sure. She herself did not know, and she thought the servants might be ignorant on the point, but she rather thought there was an old one in the pantry, but they had long kept a cat, and so didn’t require it.

“Och!” exclaimed Joe, with a broad grin, “sure it’s a trap-door I’m spakin’ of.”

Mrs Denman professed utter ignorance on this point, and when told that it ought to be known to every one in the house as a mode of escape in the event of fire, she mildly requested to know what she would have to do if there were such a trap.

“Why, get out on the roof to be sure,” (Mrs Denman shivered) “and get along the tiles to the next house,” (Mrs Denman shut her eyes and shuddered) “an’ so make yer escape. Then you should have a ladder fixed to this trap-door so as it couldn’t be took away, and ye should have some dozen fathoms o’ half-inch rope always handy, cause if ye was cut off from the staircase by fire an’ from the roof by smoke ye might have to let yourself down from a windy. It’s as well, too, to know how to knot sheets and blankets together, so that the ties won’t slip, for if you have no rope they’d be better than nothin’. You should also have a hand-pump, ma’am, and a bucket of water always handy, ’cause if you take a fire at the beginnin’ it’s easy put out. An’ it’s as well to know that you should go into a room on fire on your hands and knees, with your nose close to the ground—just as a pinter-dog goes—’cause there’s more air there than overhead; an’ it’s better to go in wi’ the hand-pump the first thing. Don’t wait to dress, ma’am.”

“Stop, stop, Mr Corney!” cried Mrs Denman, holding up her hand.

The little lady was stunned with the rapid utterance of the enthusiastic fireman, and with the dreadful suggestion that she, Mrs Denman, should, in the dead of night, get upon the roof of her dwelling and scramble over the tiles, or let herself down by a rope from a window into the public street, or creep into a burning room on her hands and knees with her nose to the ground like a pointer, and all this, too, in her night-dress, so she begged of him to stop, and said:

“But you forget, fireman, it is impossible for me to do any of these dreadful things.”

“Well, ma’am,” returned Joe coolly, “it wouldn’t be easy—though, for the matter o’ that, it’s wonderful what people will do for their lives; but I was tellin’ ye, ma’am, what ought to be done, so as somebody else in the house might do it, if you couldn’t.

“But suppose, ma’am,” continued Joe, without waiting for a reply; “suppose that the house is alight. Well, the first thing you’ve got to do, is not to get into a fluster. That can’t do no good, you know, and is sure to do mischief. Keep cool. That’s the first thing, ma’am; and be deliberate in all ye do. The second thing is, to wrap a blanket round ye, an’ get out of the house as fast as ye can without stoppin’ to dress. It’s of no use lookin’ put out, ma’am; for it’s better to escape without yer clo’es than to be burnt alive in ’em. Then be careful to shut all doors after ye as ye go. This keeps the air from gittin’ at the fire, and so smothers it down till the ingines come up. Also keep all windows shut. If the smoke is like to choke ye, git yer nose as near the ground as possible, an’ go along on yer hands and knees. A bit o’ flannel or a worsted sock held over yer mouth an’ nose, will help you to bear it better.

“If ye can’t escape by the street-door, or the trap in the roof, then get into a front room, where you will be more easy to be got at wid ladders or fire-escapes, an’ see that every mimber o’ the household is there. Many a wan has bin forgotten in the hurry-skurry of a fire, and left asleep in bed, ignorant o’ the danger till too late; when a cool head might have missed ’em, and wakened ’em in time. Whatever ye do, ma’am—keep cool.”

The probability of poor Mrs Denman keeping cool in such circumstances was uncommonly small; for she was at that moment hot all over, and her face flushed at the mere recital of such horrors!

Joe then went on to state, that the very last thing she should do was to jump from a window (a somewhat unnecessary piece of advice, poor Miss Denman thought), and that, when she was compelled to take such a step, she should first of all pitch over all the blankets and bedding she could lay hold of to make her fall easy. He wound up with an emphatic reiteration of the assurance that her only chance lay in “keeping cool.”

That night, poor Mrs Denman, in a condition of mind that is utterly indescribable, because inconceivable, went through the whole of the dreadful processes which Joe had described; and did it, too, with miraculous presence of mind and energy—in her dreams.