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The firemen going to the front at the tap of the bell, no less surely to grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on, clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments, is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man.
That which had been in the mate's boat had been lost when she was rushed by the firemen, and had hung stern down by the for'ard fall. "I'll see that Mr. Oliver's boat has all the water she wants to-day," said Atkins. "She won't want any to-night. We'll get more than we shall like. It'll rain like forty thousand cats."
Their hands were tied behind them, and they were kicked forward by the mutineers, first Jacob Van Roos they could note his pallor even at that distance then Eric Borgson, scowling and defiant, and dragged along by the men of the forecastle; and last came Douglas Campbell, surrounded by the firemen. Finally, Jerry Hovey shouted across the waist: "Black McTee! Oh, Black McTee!"
He was in a place like the Exposition ground, full of old men and women in peasant costume, like in the song, "When It's Apple Blossom Time in Normandy." Men in spiked helmets who looked like firemen kept charging through, like the Ku-Klux Klan in the movies, jumping from their horses and setting fire to buildings with strange outlandish gestures, spitting babies on their long swords.
The force was about equal to his own, not counting the engineers and the firemen. Christy stationed his men as he believed Captain Stopfoot had arranged his force. The cabin was in a deck-house; between the door of it and the piles of cotton was a vacant space of about six feet fore and aft, which could not be overlooked from the forward part of the vessel.
When the morning of the day of the procession came, Billy watched the firemen polish the brass of the engine and trim it with garlands of flowers tied with bright colored ribbons; but when they commenced to gild the horses' hoofs one of them said to him: "It will be your turn next Billy; we are going to give you a scrubbing in the tub until your hair is as soft and shiny as silk, and then we are going to gild your long horns and tie blue ribbons on them, and put the handsomest wreath of pink roses we can find round your neck.
They shivered in unison with the quivering hulk as shot after shot struck home. They screamed at their crews and stamped and fumed. At the guns their crews worked with drunken desperation, but down in the stoke-hole the firemen plied their shovels with a will and a skill that formed the most surprising feature of the Spanish side of the battle.
The firemen erected a ladder and ran up to the roof in order to save him, but he fled before them. When he could go no farther he leaped into the sea of flame. The market-place and the banks of the canal were thick with people; shoulder to shoulder they stood there, gazing at the voluptuous spectacle of the burning "Ark." The grime and poverty and the reek of centuries were going up in flames.
During these episodes, the firemen had continued at their work with cool and undistracted attention.
If neither persuasions nor imperatives will prevail, it is said that the police sometimes call in the firemen and rake the marketplace with volleys from the engine-hose.
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