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Updated: June 17, 2025
He had got it in a fall through a second floor, which gave way under him as he was attempting to rescue an old bedridden man, who lay in an inner chamber. Frank was carried out in a state of insensibility on the broad shoulders of his friend Baxmore, while Dale rescued the old man. "How goes it, Frank?" cried Willie, advancing and giving his brother's hand a warm shake; "the cut head mending eh?"
Baxmore, the sub-engineer of the station, sat down at the desk to read over the events of the day, and the others rose to leave. "By the way, Baxmore," said Dale, "what was that false alarm at 2 p.m. when I was down at Watling Street?" "Only a chemist in Kensington, who, it seems, is mad after makin' experiments, and all but blew the roof off his house with one of 'em."
Come, I'll carry you out." "No No!" she cried, pushing him resolutely away. "What! carry me me out thus! I know it's on fire. Leave me, sir, I command you I entreat you; I will die rather than appear as I am in public." Frank then went out to rejoin his comrades, and refreshed himself with a glass of beer; while Baxmore, being a teetotaller, recruited his energies with a glass of water.
As for stout George Dale, and sturdy Baxmore, and facetious Joe Corney, with his comrades Moxey, Williams, and Mason, and Sam Forest, those heroes continued to go on the even tenor of their way, fighting more battles with the flames in six months than were fought with our human enemies by all our redcoats and blue-jackets in as many years, and without making any fuss about it, too, although danger was the element in which they lived, and wounds or death might have met them any day of the year.
Indeed, Mason had fainted; but the fresh air soon revived him, and after a glass of brandy he recovered sufficiently to be fit for duty again in half an hour. Frank and Baxmore were the last to be relieved. When two fresh men came up and took the branch they descended the stairs, and a strange descent it was.
Willie was still in the middle of a glowing account of a fire, in which Frank and his friends Dale and Baxmore were the chief actors; and Emma was listening with heightened colour, parted lips, and sparkling eyes, when Matty Merryon opened the door and announced Mr Tippet.
David was now on the staircase among the firemen, fighting his way up through fire and smoke, for the purpose of saving Miss Tippet, until he was hauled forcibly back by Dale or Baxmore who were in the thick of it as usual. Anon, down in the basement, knee-deep in water, searching for the bodies of his two shopmen, both of whom were standing comfortably outside, looking on.
Finding that persuasion was useless, Baxmore ran up for a horse-cloth, and, returning, threw it over the head of the deaf old woman, whom he bore, kicking violently, into the street. The other was carried out in the same fashion only that she screamed violently, being unable to kick.
The lower staircase was a stone one the worst of all stairs in a fire, owing to its liability to crack at its connection with the wall, from the combined influence of heat and cold water. Just as the two men reached the head of it, it fell, without warning, in a mass of ruins. "Never mind," said Baxmore, "the fire-escape is still at the window." So saying, he ran through the smoke and reached it.
The cheers and shouts of the crowd were deafening as Forest came down; but the woman, who had begun to recover, said that her brother was in a loft above the room in which she had been found. The firemen were already at Forest's heels, and as soon as he dragged the man through the hole in the roof, Frank and Baxmore jumped into it with the branch, and immediately attacked the fire.
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