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If the men could touch the dike before the fire, they won. The realization of this electrified even the weary spirits of the fire-fighters. They redoubled their efforts. The hoes, mattocks and axes rose and fell feverishly. Mrs. Morton, the perspiration matting her beautiful and shining hair across her forehead, laboured with the best.
And as she drew nearer, the blaze seemed to diminish and blaze afresh as if fire-fighters were there indeed, but lacking weapons to fight with. "Is it the treasure-house?" Tomlin asked anxiously, stepping beside the girl.
Captain Falcon, after a moment of consideration, agreed that the young operator might take views showing the fire-fighters at work. "I wish I had had it going when they made that rush for the boat, though," Russ said. "I am glad you did not," returned the captain, gravely. "I would not have an audience see what cowards some of my men were to so far forget themselves. That is better forgotten.
Hart, Dave, and the three fire-fighters who had stayed to watch rode back to camp. Crawford had lost his voice. He had already seen Hart since the fire had subsided, so his greeting was to Sanders. "Good work, son," he managed to whisper, a quaver in his throat. "I'd rather we'd lost the whole works than to have had that happen to the boys, a hundred times rather.
At 3 o'clock the soldiers drove the people north on Van Ness and west up to Franklin Street, saying that they were going to dynamite the east side of Van Ness. From my window I watched the movements of the fire-fighters and dynamiters. They first set fire to every house on the east side of Van Ness Avenue between Washington and Bush streets, and by 3:30 nearly every one was on fire.
Yet in an instant their screams had been heard, three or four smoke-blackened fire-fighters from beyond the road ran forward with rakes, and in a twinkling the danger was past. Its disappearance was as incredible as its presence. "Ain't that just like a fire in the woods?" said one of the men, an elderly farmer. He drew a long, tremulous breath. "It's so tarnation quick!
I noticed that the promoter was in direct charge of the fire-fighters, and that he moved about with a zeal and a recklessness which ended for once and all in my mind the suspicion that Phelps might be correct and that Manton sought to wreck this company for the sake of Fortune Features. In an amazingly quick space of time the thing was over.
This promised to be a most fortunate thing for the would be fire-fighters. Led by the scoutmaster, the boys dashed in that direction, filled whatever vessel they happened to be carrying, and then hurried back to the house. Here the water was dashed over the side of the building that seemed to be already scorching under the fierce heat of the blazing barn.
The fire-fighters meanwhile kept up their indefatigable work under the direction of the Mayor and the chief of their department. The engines almost from the start had proved useless from lack of water, and were either abandoned or moved to the outlying districts, in the vain hope that the water mains might be repaired in time to permit of a final stand against the whirlwind march of the flames.
Sometimes they cut down the smouldering brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other side. Blinded and strangling from the smoke, the fire-fighters would make short rushes into the clearer air, swallow a breath or two of it, and plunge once more into the line to do battle with the foe. For hours the desperate battle went on. Dave lost count of time.
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