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"How 'v vif?" he asks as well as he can for the tacks. "Little higher. Oh, not so much. Down a little. Whope! that's .... Oh, plague take the firemen! Just look at that! Mercy! Mercy!" The man of the house can't turn his head. "Oh, I wouldn't have had it happen for I don't know what! Ts! Ts! Ts! That lovely silverleaf geranium that Mrs. Pritchard give me a slip of. Broke right off! Oh, my! My! My!
The cook wiped his face with a dirty cotton rag, which, afterwards, he tied round his neck. "That's how them firemen do in steamboats," he said, serenely, and much pleased with himself. "My work is as heavy as theirs I'm thinking and longer hours. Did you ever see them down the stokehold? Like fiends they look firing firing firing down there." He pointed his forefinger at the deck.
The bilge was so full of steam and boiling water that the firemen could not get to the fires. Still the steamer struggled on, labouring heavily, for the sea was running very high. At midnight they were off St. Abbs Head, when the engineers reported that the case was hopeless; the engines had entirely ceased to work.
Hicks, the blacksmith, and Nick White, a colored giant, rushed up, dodged beneath the rope, and took their accustomed places at the tongue, and with a burst of speed the engine began to draw ahead. Other firemen appeared from side streets and banging doorways, and took their places on the rope, and a shout from the juvenile contingent presently announced that the reel was falling to the rear.
"What possessed you to go in there, anyway?" asked the tall policeman, paying no attention to the firemen running past him into the house. "What made you do it?" "I had to get Jessie's coat," explained Sunny Boy. "And her rubbers." And that was what Sunny Boy said to every one who asked him why he had gone into the burning school.
To get the engine out, and to assemble the firemen, he had to rouse the whole town; and to do this in the middle of the night was nothing less than to frighten the poor people of Sauveterre, who had heard the drums beating the alarm but too often during the war with the Germans, and then again during the reign of the Commune. Therefore M. Seneschal asked, "Is it a serious fire?"
Having to pass the King Street fire station, he resolved to look in on his brother. The folding-doors of the engine-house were wide open, and the engine itself, clean and business-like, with its brass-work polished bright, stood ready for instant action. Two of the firemen were conversing at the open door, while several others could be seen lounging about inside.
Men, wimmen and children rushin' every which way police firemen fire bells clangin' men shoutin' wimmen shriekin' and every minute the flames increased! The firemen did what they could, they worked like giants, but the element they wuz workin' aginst wuz more powerful than man.
"I've seen fires in the city," said Margery, "or, at least, houses after a fire. And it really looked worse than this, because there'd be a whole lot of things that had started to burn. Then the firemen came along, to put out the fire, and though the things weren't really any good, they had to be carted away." "Yes, but this fire made a clean sweep wherever it started at all.
Once a month the firemen are called out to practise with the engine in the streets, to the infinite delight of all the boys in the neighbourhood, who follow the engine in crowds, and provoke the operators to turn the hose and play upon their merry ranks: and then what laughing and shouting and scampering in all directions, as the ragged urchins shake their dripping garments, and fly from the ducking they had courted a few minutes before!
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