Part 13
I WILL first tell a story, fresh in my memory, about a New Jersey village lost in the hills back of Lake Hopatcong, a charming, sleepy little village that reaches along a stream fringed with butterball-trees and looks contentedly out of its valley up the steep wooded hill that rises before it. Nobody in Glen Gardner cares much what there is in the world beyond that hill.
The general attitude of Glen Gardner toward progress is shown well enough by this, that the village could never see the use of a fire department. They never had one, and never proposed to; other people's houses might get on fire; theirs never did. As a matter of fact, nobody could remember when there had been a fire in Glen Gardner, unless it was Aunt Ann Fritts, who was eighty-eight years old, and remembered back farther than was necessary.
This was the case on a certain drizzling Sunday in March of the new-century year, when, at 6.30 A.M., the world beyond the hill intruded itself upon Glen Gardner's peacefulness in such strange and sudden fashion that old Mrs. Bergstresser collapsed from the shock. What made it worse was the fact that there had been a dance the night before at Farmer Apgar's, and half-past six found most of the village dozing comfortably. There was really nothing to do before church-time. So they all thought, at least, little suspecting that even now, as they slept, a long oil-train was puffing up the steep grade from Easton, bringing sixty cars loaded with crude petroleum and trouble.
On came the oil-train, its front engine panting as the drivers slipped, and the "pusher" back of the caboose shouldering up the load with snorts of impatience. Ouf! The front of the train climbs over the ridge at Hampton Junction, half a mile back of Glen Gardner, where the Jersey Central tracks reach their highest point. Now they are all right. There is a long down grade ahead for three miles. The pusher gives a final shove at the rear end, and cuts loose, glad to be rid of the job. The men in the caboose wave good-by to the fireman and engineer as they drop away.
Hello! What's that jerk? They look out and see the last oil-car just clearing the divide. It's nothing; they're over now; they're running faster. Queer place, this! There's a spring here with two streams that part in the middle like a woman's hair; one goes down the east side, the other down the west side. What? Broken in two?
The caboose crew start to run forward; a brakeman on the front half starts to run back. Thirty-seven cars behind the engine a coupling has snapped, and the train is taking the down grade in two sections: twenty-three loaded oil-cars are running away, and a million gallons of oil are chasing two million gallons down a mountain-side!
Everything now depends upon the brakeman on the forward section. He is the only man who can judge the danger, and signal the engineer what to do. The engineer does not even know that anything is wrong. It is plainly the brakeman's business to keep the front half of the train out of the way of the rear half. They must go faster, faster as the runaway cars gain on them. Any one can see that it is undesirable to have two million gallons of oil struck by a million gallons coming at forty miles an hour.
Yet the brakeman does the wrong thing (no man can be sure how he will act in imminent peril); the brakeman signals the engineer to stop. Perhaps he planned a gradual slow-up to block the flying section gently; perhaps he did not realize how fast the runaway was coming. Most likely he lost his head entirely, as better men have done in less serious crises. At any rate, the front section presently drew up with grinding brakes on the ledge of track that stretches along the cheek of the mountain just over the slope where the slumbering village lay, not five feet from Carling's warehouse, beyond which were the coal-yards and the wooden houses of Glen Gardner, the post-office, the hardware store, and the main street. Of all places for that train to stop, this was the worst.
It was a matter of seconds now until the crash came, and on this followed a shattering blast that shook the valley and hill, and brought the village to its feet in a daze of fear. Four oil-cars were smashed in the wreck and hurled across the tracks for the rear cars to pile up on. And straightway there was a gushing oil-well here, out of which in the first ten seconds came an explosion with the noise of cannon, that showered burning oil over fields and trees and shingled housetops, while a fire column shot up fifty feet in the air and began its fierce feeding on the broken tanks. And out of this fire fountain came a smoking fire river, that rolled down the hill toward the village.
At this moment, Joe Snyder, who had not gone to the dance the night before, and was doomed now to the early worm's fate, had just put his key in the door of the butcher-shop. He never turned the key, nor saw it again, nor saw the butcher-shop again. What he did see was a roaring torrent of oil sweeping down the street and blazing fifteen feet high as it came. And the picture next presented when Snyder, white as a ghost, raced down the sidewalk ahead of the fire, will stay long in the memory of those who saw it from their windows.
But this was no time for looking at pictures out of windows; there were other things to be done, and done quickly. Never did fire descend so swiftly upon a village. Even as the startled sleepers stared in fright, houses all about them burst into flames like candles on a Christmas tree. Now the warehouse is burning, and the sheds across the tracks; and there goes the hardware store; and there goes the carpenter's shop; and now the fire-stream rolls through Main Street, and licks up the Reeves house on one corner and Vliet's store on the other. Then the drug-store goes, and Carling's store and Rinehart's restaurant. Trees are burning, fences are burning, the very streets are burning, and men see fire rolling across their front yards like drifting snow.
I do not purpose to follow the incidents of this fire and the several explosions, nor show how the village fought against it vainly, damming up fiery oil-streams and turning their courses, toiling at bucket-lines, and spreading blistering walls with soaked carpets. The point is that these efforts alone would never have availed, and Glen Gardner would speedily have lain in ashes, had not fire-engines from Sommerville and Washington been hurried to the spot. And even as it was, a section of the village was wiped away in clean-licked ruins, which stood for many a day as a grim reminder that the only safety against fires in these times lies in being able to fight fires well.
Which brings me, of course, to the modern fire department and the men who risk their lives as a matter of daily routine to protect their fellow-men. I will begin with some incidents of one particular fire that happened in New York on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. It was a pleasant afternoon, and Fifth Avenue was crowded with people gathered to watch the parade. A gayer, pleasanter scene it would have been hard to find at three o'clock, or a sadder one at four.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, coming along with bands and banners, were nearing Forty-sixth Street, when suddenly there sounded hoarse shouts and the angry clang of fire-gongs, and down Forty-seventh Street came Hook and Ladder 4 on a dead run, and swung into Fifth Avenue straight at the pompous Hibernians, who immediately became badly scared Irishmen and took to their heels. But the big ladders went no farther. They were needed here, oh, so badly needed; for the Windsor Hotel was on fire--the famous Windsor Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. It was on fire, far gone with fire before ever the engines were called; and the reason was that everybody supposed that of course _somebody_ had sent the alarm. And so they all watched the fire, and waited for the engines, ten, fifteen minutes, and by that time a great column of flame was roaring up the elevator-shaft, and people on the roof, in their madness, were jumping down to the street. Then some sane citizen went to a fire-box and rang the call, and within ninety seconds Engine 65 was on the ground. And after her came Engines 54 and 21. But there was no making up that lost fifteen minutes. The fire had things in its teeth now, and three, four, five alarms went out in quick succession. Twenty-three engines had their streams on that fire in almost as many minutes. And the big fire-tower came from Thirty-sixth Street and Ninth Avenue, and six hook-and-ladder companies came.
Let us watch Hook and Ladder 21 for a moment. She was the mate of the fire-tower, and the rush of her galloping horses was echoing up the avenue just as Battalion Chief John Binns made out a woman in a seventh-story window on the Forty-sixth Street side, where the fire was raging fiercely. The woman was holding a little dog in her arms, and it looked as if she was going to jump. The chief waved her to stay where she was, and, running toward 21 as she plunged along, motioned toward Forty-sixth Street. Whereupon the tiller-man at his back wheel did a pretty piece of steering, and even as they swung the long truck in the turn the crew began hoisting the big ladder. Such a thing is never done, for the swaying of that ten-ton mass might easily upset the truck; but every second counted here, and they took the chance.
As they drew along the curb, Fireman McDermott sprang up the slowly rising ladder, and two men came behind with scaling-ladders, for they saw that the main ladder would never reach the woman. Five stories is what it did reach, and then McDermott, standing on the top round, smashed one of the scaling-ladders through a sixth-story window, and climbed on, smashed the second scaling-ladder through a seventh-story window, and five seconds later had the woman in his arms.
To carry a woman down the front of a burning building on scaling-ladders is a matter of regular routine for a fireman, like jumping from a fourth story down to a net, or making a bridge of his body. It is part of the business. But to have one foot in the air reaching for the lower rung of a swaying, flimsy thing, and to feel another rung break under you and your struggling burden, and to fall two feet and catch safely, that is a thing not every fireman could do; but McDermott did it, and he brought the woman unharmed to the ground--and the dog, too.
Almost at the same moment, the crowd on Forty-seventh Street thrilled in admiration of a rescue feat even more perilous. On the roof, screaming in terror, was Kate Flannigan, a servant, swaying over the cornice, on the point of throwing herself down. Then out of a top-floor window crept a little fireman, and stood on the fire-escape, gasping for air. Then he reached in and dragged out an unconscious woman and lowered her to others, and was just starting down himself when yells from the street made him look up, and he saw Kate Flannigan. She was ten feet above him, and he had no means of reaching her.
The crowd watched anxiously, and saw the little fireman lean back over the fire-escape, saw him motion and shout something to the woman. And then she crept over the cornice edge, hung by her hands for a second, and dropped into the fireman's arms. It isn't every big strong man who could catch a sizable woman in a fall like that and hold her, but this stripling did it, because he had the nerve and knew how. And that made another life saved.
By this time flames were breaking out of every story from street to roof. It seemed impossible to go on with the rescue work; yet the men persisted, even on the Fifth Avenue front, bare of fire-escapes. They used the long extension ladders as far as they could, and then "scaled it" from window to window. Here it was that William Clark of Hook and Ladder 7 made the rescues that gave him the Bennett medal--took three women out of seventh-story windows when it was like climbing over furnace mouths to get there. And one of these women he reached only by working his way along narrow stone ledges for three windows, and back the same way to his ladder with the woman on his shoulders. Even so it is likely he would have failed in this last effort had not Edward Ford come part way along the ledges to meet and help him.
Meantime Fireman Kennedy of Engine 23 had rescued an old lady from the sixth floor; and Joseph Kratchovil of Hook and Ladder 2 had carried out Mrs. Leland, wife of the proprietor, from deadly peril on the fifth floor; and Frank Tissier of Hook and Ladder 4 had found a family named Wells--father, mother, and daughter--in a blazing room, and borne them out, with his own clothes burning, to the arms of Brennan and Sweeney, who were waiting for him in a fury of fire at the top of the eighty-five-foot extension ladder.
And Andrew Fitzgerald, also of Hook and Ladder 4, but off on sick-leave with pneumonia, had shown the true fireman spirit as he came from the doctors. His instructions were to go home and stay there. He was not on duty at all. He was scarcely strong enough to be out of bed, but when he heard that there were lives in peril down the avenue he forgot everything, and ran to the place of danger. There was need of him here, and, sick-leave or not, pneumonia or not, he would do what he could. What he did was to carry out the last ones taken alive from the ill-fated hotel--three women whom he bore in his arms from the fourth floor through roaring hallways, then up a fire-escape, then back into the building, with the flames singeing him, and a shattering blast of exploding gas pursuing him, and finally out on a balcony whence, with the help of Policeman Harrigan, he got them over safely to an adjoining housetop. No wonder the Bonner medal was awarded him later for conspicuous courage.
II
WHAT BILL BROWN DID IN THE GREAT TARRANT FIRE
THE great test for Fire-engine 29 and her crew, the test of life or death that firemen wait years for (to see what stuff is in them), came of a mild autumn afternoon, not soon to be forgotten by men who lunch down City Hall way, by men who swarm in the stone hives of Chambers Street and Greenwich Street and Washington Street. This was the day when innocent, wholesome chlorate of potash (excellent for colds) showed what it can do when you take it by the ton with a pinch of fire. This was the day of the great explosions, when it rained red-hot stones and blazing timbers, when whole blocks of lower Manhattan shivered with the concussion. This was Tarrant's day, October 29, 1900.
It all started smoothly enough, with brass gongs tapping out deliberate 62's, at which the big horses in most engine-houses stamped their displeasure, for 62 meant nothing to them--at least not on the first call. But it was great business for Harry and Nigger and Baby, the two blacks and the gray that pull old 29, and there they were at the first tap, breasting the rubber-bound stall chains as if to hurry up laggard electricity, which presently shot its sparks and loosed their fastenings.
Now, down drop the stall chains, and the horses, pounding over the tiles, crowd up three abreast ahead of the engine. Down drop the crew, silently, swiftly, sliding from ceiling to floor like so many blue-shirted ghosts. And click, click, its traces up and collars off the frames, and snap, snap, until the last hook holds.
"H'm," says Baby, as the thick wheels start, "six seconds; might have been worse."
"We'll strike the curb in eight and a half!" snorts Nigger, as the doors swing wide and they bang into Chambers Street.
Out into Chambers Street they go, with Johnnie Marks driving and Bill Brown jamming blazing waste into her fire-box, where wood and oil do the rest. On the back steps rides Captain Devanny, steadying himself by the coal-box, scowling under his helmet, and jerking fast on the alarm-cord as they swing into Greenwich Street. There is the fire just ahead, corner of Warren Street, nasty black smoke choking back the crowd. And here comes the hose-wagon, clanging and rumbling at their heels.
"It's first water for us, Bill," said Devanny.
"There's drugs and stuff in there," said Bill.
Then they fell to work--as firemen do.
"When the first explosion came," said Captain Devanny, telling the story weeks afterward, "I was inside the building, up one flight, at the bottom of a well of fire. McArthur and Buckley were with me, playing a stiff stream to protect the back windows. There's where people in the building had to run to, men and girls; we could see 'em crowding on the balconies over Bishop's Alley, and we wanted to give 'em a chance on the fire-escapes. You see, a red-hot ladder isn't much use to anybody.
"Well, they got down, every soul of 'em, but by that time big chunks of fire were dropping all around us, and our helmets were crumpling and our clothes were burning. Besides that, we kept hearing little explosions overhead, louder than the fire crackle, louder than pistol shots, and when you hear those in a drug-house you don't feel any too good. I went to the front, and saw fire breaking out everywhere on the fourth and fifth floors. Then I knew it was all up, and ran back to order the boys out. On the stairs I met Gillon, and was just yelling, 'Save yourselves!' when the crash came. It was like cannon, sir, and sounded _bzzzzzzzz_ in my ears for a long time, as I lay in the wreck, with tongues of blue flames licking down over me. I'd been blown clean off the second-floor landing and dropped in the hallway, twenty feet back from the door. McArthur and Gillon were down the elevator shaft, where they'd jumped. Nobody dared lift a head, for a cyclone of fire was all over us."
It is not my purpose to detail the sufferings and final rescue of these flame-bound men. They had some vivid glimpses of death and some cruel burns, but firemen count these nothing, nor is McArthur's act in turning back through fire to save a fallen comrade (Merron) more than ordinary fireman's pluck, nor is Devanny's experience when caught in the second explosion and blown through a shop on Washington Street more than an ordinary hazard of the business. Indeed, this Tarrant fire should have but little of my attention were there not something in it beyond noise and house-smashing. There was this thing in it, overlooked by newspaper reports, yet vastly important, the behavior of Bill Brown, to whom, as a representative, one may say, of engine crew 29, came the great test I spoke of, the rare test which nothing but the highest courage can satisfy. All firemen have courage, but it cannot be known until the test how many have this particular kind--Bill Brown's kind.
And the odd part of it is that what he did seems a little thing, and it took only a minute to do, and it saved no life and made no difference whatever in the outcome of the fire, yet to the few who know--or care--it stands in the memories of the department as a fine and unusual bit of heroism.
What happened was this: Engine 29, pumping and pounding her prettiest, stood at the northwest corner of Greenwich and Warren streets, so close to the blazing drug-house that Driver Marks thought it wasn't safe there for the three horses, and led them away. That was fortunate, but it left Brown alone, right against the cheek of the fire, watching his boiler, stoking in coal, keeping his steam-gage at 75. As the fire gained chunks of red-hot sandstone began to smash down on the engine. Brown ran his pressure up to 80, and watched the door anxiously where the boys had gone in.
Then the explosion came, and a blue flame, wide as a house, curled its tongues half-way across the street, enwrapping engine and man, setting fire to the elevated railway station overhead, or such wreck of it as the shock had left. Bill Brown stood by his engine, with a wall of fire before him and a sheet of fire above him. He heard quick footsteps on the pavements, and voices, that grew fainter and fainter, crying: "Run for your lives!" He heard the hose-wagon horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging away, mad with fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, and the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, and neck. Only a fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain over the bared surfaces was--well, there _is_ no pain worse than that of fire scorching in upon the quick flesh seared by fire.
Here, I think, was a crisis to make a very brave man quail. Bill Brown knew perfectly well why every one was running; there was going to be another explosion in a couple of minutes, maybe sooner, out of this hell in front of him. And the order had come for every man to save himself, and every man had done it, except the lads inside. And the question was, Should he run or should he stay and die? It was tolerably certain that he would die if he stayed. On the other hand, the boys of old 29 were in there. Devanny and McArthur, and Gillon and Merron, his friends, his chums: he'd seen them drag the hose in through that door--there it was now, a long, throbbing snake of it--and they hadn't come out. Perhaps they were dead. Yes, but perhaps they weren't. If they were alive, they needed water now more than they ever needed anything before. And they couldn't get water if he quit his engine.
Bill Brown pondered this a long time, perhaps four seconds; then he fell to stoking in coal, and he screwed her up another notch, and he eased her running parts with the oiler. Explosion or not, pain or not, alone or not, he was going to stay and make that engine hum. He had done the greatest thing a man can do--had offered his life for his friends.
It is pleasant to know that this sacrifice was averted. A quarter of a minute or so before the second and terrible explosion, Devanny and his men came staggering from the building. Then it was that Merron fell, and McArthur checked his flight to save him. Then it was, but not until then, that Bill Brown left Engine 29 to her fate (she was crushed by the falling walls), and ran for his life with his comrades. He had waited for them, he had stood the great test.
It were easy to multiply stories of the firemen, stories of the captains, stories of the chiefs--there is no end to them. However many may be told or written, they are but fragments of fragments. New York has one hundred and thirty-six engine companies, forty hook-and-ladder companies, besides the volunteers on Staten Island, and there is not one of these but has its proud record of courage and self-sacrifice. Other lives show bravery for gain, bravery for show, bravery for sport; these show bravery for the public good and for no other reason--unselfish bravery. Think what the firemen do! They give up regular sleep, they give up home life, they bear every exposure, they face death in many forms as a matter of daily routine, they never refuse an order, lead where it may (such a case is practically unknown), and they do all this for modest pay and scant glory. Three or four dollars a day will cover their earnings, and as for the glory, what is it? For some a medal, a tattered paper with roll-of-honor mention, a picture in the newspapers; for most of them nothing. Yet they are cheerful, happy men. Why? I have wondered about this.