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Updated: May 6, 2025
The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped that auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such a stoppage. Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another kick when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for the door Demetre sprang for Joe.
Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands or rather the feet of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was going to receive. Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and made a noise like a clucking hen.
They gave him paper, and he wrote, "Demetre Svangvsk." "Looks like short hand," said the desk man. "He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not him quite understand."
And then John Byrnes's nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commissioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside for an informal inspection.
"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen a Wild West show "they're the greatest riders in the world." The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. "Yas yas me Cossack," he spluttered, striking his chest. "Cossack!" repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of a Russian?"
Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen. In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital.
Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen. John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment.
The men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, in which everything shone like my lady's mirror. The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would do him credit.
The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident.
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