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Careers of Danger and Daring

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<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>III</h2> <h3>HERE WE VISIT AN ENGINE-HOUSE AT NIGHT AND CHAT WITH THE DRIVER</h3> <div class='cap'>THERE is something strange and solemn about an engine-house at night, like the stillness of a church or the hush of a drowsing menagerie. You are filled with a sense of impending danger, which is symbolized everywhere: in the boots ranged at bunk-sides of sighing sleepers, in the brass columns, smooth as glass, that reach up through manholes in the floor, and at which the fire crew leap, half drunk with fatigue; in the engine, purring at the double doors (steam always at 25 in the boiler), with tongues and harness lifted for the spring; in the big gong which watches under the clock (and the clock watches, too), a tireless yellow eye, that seems to be ever saying, "Shall I strike? Shall I strike?" And the clock ticks back, "Wait, wait," or "Now, now." That is what you feel chiefly in an engine-house at night—the intense, quiet watchfulness. Even the horses seem to be watching with the corner of an eye as they munch their feed.</div> <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus55.jpg" width-obs="350" height-obs="550" alt="A RESCUE FROM A FIFTH STORY." title="" /> A RESCUE FROM A FIFTH STORY.</div> I counsel a man, perhaps a woman, weary of the old evening things, the stupid show, the trivial talk, the laughter without mirth, the suppers without nourishment, to try an hour or two at an engine-house, making friends with the fireman on guard (it may be the driver of a chief, as happened to me), and see if he doesn't walk back home with a gladder heart and a better opinion of his fellows. I fancy some of our reformers, even, might visit an engine-house with profit, and learn to dwell occasionally on the good that is in our cities and learn something about fighting without bluster and without ever letting up. It was a tall, loose-jointed fellow I met at the Elm Street station, a typical down-easter, who had wandered over the world and finally settled down as driver of the nervous little wagon that carries Chief Ahearn, a daring man and famous, in his dashes from fire to fire over the city. In these days of idol-breaking it is good to see such hero worship as one finds here for all men who deserve it, whether in humble station or near the top, like this wiry little chief, asleep now up-stairs against the night's emergencies. Ask any fireman in New York to tell you about Ahearn, and you'll find there is one business where jealousy doesn't rule. Ahearn? What do they think of Ahearn? Why, he's a wonder, sir; he's the dandiest man. Say, did ye ever hear how he crawled under that blazing naphtha tank and got a man out who was in there unconscious? They gave him the Bennett medal for that. And d' ye know about the rescue he made up in Williamsbridge, when that barrel of kerosene exploded? Oh, but the prettiest thing Ahearn ever did was— Then each man will tell you a different thing. The driver's favorite story was of the night when Ahearn ran back into a burning tenement on Delancey Street, "where nobody had any business to go, sir, the fire was that fierce." It was fine to see his face light up as he told what his chief did on this occasion, and the whole quiet engine-house seemed to throb with pride. "You see," he went on, "there was a half-crazy mother screaming around that her baby was in the building. As a matter of fact, the baby was all right—some neighbors had it—but the mother didn't know that, and the chief didn't know it, either. He was chief of the 4th Battalion then; now he's deputy chief—been promoted, y' know. Chief or not didn't cut any ice with him, and he just wrapped a coat around his head and went in. He got to the room all right where the woman said her baby was, and it was like a furnace; so he did the only thing a man can do—got down low on his hands and knees and worked along toward the bed, with his mouth against the floor, sucking in air. He went through fire, sir, that nearly burned his head off—it did burn off the rims of his ears—but he got to that bed somehow, and then he found he'd done it all for nothing. There wasn't any baby there to save. "But there was a chief to save now. He was about gone when he got back to the door, and there he found that a spring-lock had snapped shut on him, and he was a prisoner, sir—a prisoner in a stove. He didn't have any strength left, poor old chief; he couldn't breathe, let alone batter down doors, and we'd had some choice mourning around here inside of a minute if the lads of Hook and Ladder 18 hadn't smashed in after him. They thought he'd looked for that baby about long enough. The last thing he did was to kick his foot through a panel, and they found him there unconscious, with his rubber boot sticking out into the hall. "Tell ye another thing the chief did," continued the driver. "He rescued a husband and wife in the Hotel Jefferson, out of a seventh-story window, when the whole business was roaring with fire. That's only about a month ago; it was a mighty sad case. We had three people to save, if we could, and two of 'em sick—the husband and wife—and the third was a trained nurse taking care of 'em. Shows how people get rattled in a fire. Why, if they'd only kept their hall door shut—well, they didn't, and there they were, all three at the window, without hardly any clothes on, and the flames close behind 'em. "We got up on the top floor of the Union Square Hotel, the chief and I, about ten feet away along the same wall, and by leaning out of our windows we could tell 'em what to do. It was a case of ropes and swing across to us, but it isn't every man can make a rope fast right when a fire is hurrying him, especially a sick man, or mebbe it was a poor rope he had. Anyhow, when the nurse came out of that window, you might say tumbled out (you see, they made her go first), she just fell like that much dead weight, scared, you know, and when the rope tightened it snapped, and down she went, seven stories—killed her bang. "The chief saw that would never do, so we went up on the roof and threw over more rope. It was clothes-line, the only thing handy, but I doubled it to make sure. And with that we got the husband and wife across all safe, for now, you see, we could lift 'em out easy, without such a terrible jerk on the rope. That was the chief's idea." "Yes," said I, "but you helped. What's your name?" "No, no," he smiled; "never mind me. I'm nobody. Let the chief have it all." And then he went on with the story, which interested me mainly as showing the kind of loyalty one finds among these firemen. Each man will tell of another man's achievements, not of his own. You could never find out what Bill Brown did from Brown himself. The clock ticked on, some service calls rang on the telephone, and once the driver bounded up in the middle of a word and stood with coat half off, in strained attention, counting the strokes of the gong. No, it wasn't for them. They'd go, though, on the second call. Second calls usually came within twenty minutes of the first, so we'd soon see. Meantime, he told me about a fireman known as "Crazy" Banta. "Talk about daredevils!" said he, "this man Banta beat the town. Why, I've known him to go up on a house with a line of men where they had to cross the ridge of a slate roof—you know, where the two sides slant up to a point. Well, the other men would straddle along careful, one leg on each side, but when Banta came he'd walk across straight up, just like he was down on the street. That's why we called him 'Crazy'—he'd do such crazy things. "And funny? Well, sir, he'd swaller quarters as fast as you'd give 'em to him, and let you punch him in the stomach and hear 'em rattle around. Then he'd light a match, open his mouth, put the match 'way inside, and let you watch the quarters come up again. Had a double stomach, or something. He could swaller canes, too, same as a circus man. Said he'd learned all his tricks over in India, but some of the boys thought he lied. They said he'd prob'ly traveled with some show. He used to tell us how he could speak Burmese and Siamese and Hindu, all those lingoes, just perfect; so one day a battalion chief called his bluff when there were a lot of emigrants from those parts down at the Battery, and blamed if Banta didn't chin away to the whole crowd of 'em; you'd thought he was their long-lost brother. Was he a foreigner? No, sir; he was born in Hohokus, N. J. "But the time Banta fixed his reputation all right was at a fire in Pell Street—some factory. After that he might have told us he could fly or eat glass or any old thing, and we'd have believed him. Tell ye what he did. This factory all smashed in after she'd burned a while, and one of the boys—Dave Soden—got wedged under the second floor, with all the other floors piled on top of him. It was a great big criss-cross of timbers, with Dave at the bottom, and the flames eating in fast. We could see the whole thing was going to make a fine bonfire in about three minutes, and it looked as if Dave would be in it. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus56.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="395" alt="AT FULL SPEED." title="" /> AT FULL SPEED.</div> "You understand, we didn't dare pry up the timbers, for that would have brought the whole factory down on Dave and killed him plumb. And we couldn't begin at the top and throw off the timbers, for there wasn't any time. We didn't know what to do, but Banta he did. He grabbed up a saw, and said he'd crawl in and get Dave out. And, by thunder! he did. He just wriggled in and out like a snake through those timbers, and when he got to Dave he sawed off the end of a beam that held him and then dragged him out. He took big chances, for, you see, if he'd sawed off the wrong beam it might have brought down the whole business on both of them. But Banta he knew how to do it. Oh, he was a wonder! They gave him the medal for that, and promoted him. Say, you'd never guess how he ended up?" "How?" I asked. "Got hit by a cable-car; yes, sir. Hurt so bad they retired him. What d' ye think of that? Not afraid of the devil, and done up by a measly cable-car!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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