United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The whole crew of the steamer, with the exception of firemen and engineers, rushed up the jetty past the thoughtful Almayer and vanished from my sight. The white fog swallowed them up; and again there was a deep silence that seemed to extend for miles up and down the stream. Still taciturn, Almayer started to climb on board, and I went down from the bridge to meet him on the after deck.
Accuse me, if you choose, of ill-will towards the most precious invention of our century, nothing shall prevent me from saying that the principal result of railways, after the subjection of petty industry, will be the creation of a population of degraded laborers, signalmen, sweepers, loaders, lumpers, draymen, watchmen, porters, weighers, greasers, cleaners, stokers, firemen, etc.
He groaned aloud and great tears rolled down his face. Betty Betty! Carefully he laid his burden down and staggered to the open window. The firemen were raising a ladder to another window. He beckoned to them, he shouted to them in a hoarse voice that seemed to him to make no noise at all. But they saw him and shifted the ladder to his window. Was there a chance, after all?
There, despite their protests, they were tied by their arms and legs to large wooden crosses, face downwards, and beaten on the naked buttocks, twenty-nine tremendous blows from a hard cane, each. Then they were dismissed. That same night firemen were let loose on the village where many of the students lived and boarded. They dragged out the young men and beat them.
She had sung a shrill little song, and danced a little dance at a public benefit for the widows of three heroic firemen, when she was only nine. Her lovely mop had been crimped out of all natural wave; her youthful digestion menaced by candy and chewing gum; her naturally rather sober and pensive disposition completely altered, or at least eclipsed.
One called up the sleeping firemen, the other got out two horses which stood ready harnessed in their stalls. The fireman's grasp sobered the madman. A street was named. The outbreak of the fire was instantly telegraphed to head-quarters, and thence to other stations concerned.
Billy had been with the firemen about a month, when one day he heard them talking about a procession they were going to be in, that all the fire-engines, hose-carts and hook-and-ladder companies were to be in the parade and that the horses were to have their hoofs gilded and wear collars of roses, and that he, Billy, was to have his horns and hoofs gilded also, and wear a rose collar and be led by a chain made of roses, by one of the firemen who was to wear a red shirt, black trousers and high patent leather boots and his fireman's hat with a visor.
From the signal-boys to the firemen in the stokehole for news travels fast aboard ship all were expecting the muffled report and the rending, tearing explosion of a torpedo under the ship's bottom. The terrible power of the torpedo was known to all, and the dread that filled the hearts of that waiting crew could not be put into words. Of course it was a false alarm.
An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt's dwelling in one of the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her escape cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window, her child in her arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently dazed. Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor had given way, and she was seen no more.
In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers!
Word Of The Day