One night, some months after the occurrences related in the last few chapters, Rollo had an opportunity of witnessing with Jonas a great conflagration in the city. This incident may very properly be described in this volume, which relates to the phenomena of fire.

Jonas and Rollo had gone to the city on some business for Mr. Holiday. Jonas’s orders were to return that night if he could get through with his business; if not, to wait until the next day. It happened that he could not get through with his business, for the man whom he wished to see was not at home. They said he would be at home that night, and that Jonas could see him early the next morning. So they had to spend the night in the city. They took a walk in the evening, doing some errands, and looking at the curious things in the shop windows; and at last they went back to the hotel, and retired to bed. Jonas had engaged a room for himself very near Rollo’s room.

Rollo did not go to sleep for some time, his mind being somewhat excited by the novelty of the scenes which he had been witnessing, and by the strange place in which he was now trying to go to sleep. At length, however, he got asleep, and dreamed that he was buying a large and beautiful rocking-horse for Nathan, at one of the toy-shops in the city,—and was just mounting the rocking-horse to take a little ride himself, when his visions were disturbed by hearing some strange, confused, and terrifying sounds. He started up and listened. There seemed to be a great sound in the street, and a bright light was flashing and moving upon the wall over his head. He also heard a noise at the door of his room; and, before he had time to consider what all this disturbance meant, he heard Jonas’s voice, saying in a gentle tone,—

“Rollo.”

“What?” said Rollo, eagerly.

“Don’t be frightened. It’s only a fire.”

“A fire! where?” said Rollo.

“I don’t know where it is,” replied Jonas.

Rollo listened a moment, and he could hear the city bells ringing in very mournful and alarming tones, some near, and some at a distance. There was one belonging to a church nearly opposite to the hotel, which sounded very loud and near. The flashing light upon the wall moved gradually along the room, and then disappeared; and soon after another came in on the opposite side, and moved along the wall in the same manner. Rollo could hear the sound of a great uproar in the street below, consisting of confused but loud and hoarse voices, the heavy rattling of wheels, and a bell which sounded in a very peculiar manner as it moved along the street, as if it was rung by being jolted and jarred.

Rollo and Jonas went to the window to look out. It was a dark and cloudy night, and the window was very high from the street, as Rollo’s room was in one of the upper stories of the house. Still they could look down upon the street below, and see that it was filled with a torrent of men, moving along in a hurried manner, the whole mass being illuminated by great torches which some of the men carried in their hands. They were dragging along a fire engine, which thundered over the pavement as they ran, in the most terrifying manner.

“Let’s go and see the fire,” said Rollo.

“Well,” said Jonas, “we might; only perhaps there may not be any fire. Perhaps it is only an alarm.”

“No matter,” said Rollo; “let us go and see the alarm.”

Rollo knew that to witness the scene of noise and excitement in the street, would interest him very much, even if there was no house on fire.

“Well,” said Jonas, “dress yourself as quick as you can, and I’ll come in again when I’m ready.”

Jonas accordingly went out, and finished making his preparations, and then returned. He required Rollo to put on his great-coat, for he said there would be danger of taking cold in standing still in the chill evening air, to look at the fire if they should find one. When they were ready, they hurried down stairs.

The street seemed to be nearly still when they left Rollo’s room; but, when they issued from the hotel, and stepped out upon the sidewalk, they heard the sound of noise and uproar approaching again. They looked in the direction from which the sound came, and saw a great torch coming along the street, which flamed, and flashed, and illuminated the pavements and the buildings on each side of it. It was followed by a long, double line of men and boys, with other torches and lights at intervals, pulling upon a rope; and farther behind they heard a very heavy, lumbering sound of wheels, and a sort of confused roar of voices mingling with it. It was another fire engine. It approached with great rapidity, and a crowd of men and boys attended and followed it, so large as to fill the street full; and, brushing rudely by Jonas and Rollo on the sidewalk, they filled the air with their loud but hoarse and hollow shouts. “Ahead with her! ahead with her!”

Rollo could not see the engine, for the street was perfectly filled, while it passed, with a dense crowd of men and boys, all running along by its side. Rollo thought that some of them would certainly get run over.

“We’ll go a little slower,” said Jonas, “till the engine gets by, and then we shall have more room.”

“No,” said Rollo, “let’s keep up. I want to see where they will go.”

“Well,” said Jonas,——“O, there’s the fire.”

Rollo looked forward where Jonas pointed. He saw, through the opening between some tall buildings before them, a faint light in the sky. He saw it however only for a few moments; for, as they passed on, the towering walls of the city buildings intervened again, and hid it from their view.

Pretty soon, however, at a turn of the street they came in view of the light again; and now it looked much brighter than before. It spread upwards, in fact, and illuminated a considerable part of the sky. The sight of the light appeared to animate the engine-men, for they began to run on faster than before, the heavy lumbering of the wheels, and the shouts of, “Ahead with her!” sounding louder than ever. Opposite to where Rollo and Jonas were, there was a light, tossing and dancing upon the top of a tall pole, representing the number ten in figures of fire.

“O Jonas,” said Rollo, “look at that ten.”

“Yes,” said Jonas, “that is the number of the engine.”

“How can they make such fiery figures?”

“Why, they put the lamp in a glass lantern, and they paint the glass black, all except a place left bare, of the shape of the figure which they wish to have, and so the light shines through where the glass is not painted, and that makes the figures of fire.”

Just then Rollo heard sounds of new uproar and confusion approaching by another street. He looked in the direction, and saw an engine coming with its long lines of men and its great crowds, its torches and its thundering sounds. The great mass seemed to be coming on with prodigious momentum. They were coming down into the street where they were, and Rollo thought that they would certainly run over No. 10. When they approached the junction of the streets, and saw that the street which they were coming into was already filled up with another engine and the crowds about it, they did not stop, but kept rushing on, and swept around the corner directly into the crowd, where all became mixed and mingled together, making confusion worse confounded. The crowd became so dense that Rollo and Jonas could not have got along at all, were it not that the crowd itself was moving on; and so every body that was among them was necessarily borne onwards too.

Just then Rollo heard a very loud and hoarse voice calling out, “Hold on, No. 10! Hold on, No. 10!”

“What’s that?” said Rollo.

“That’s a man with a speaking-trumpet,” said Jonas.

“What does he mean by hold on?”

“He means stop,” replied Jonas. “He wants No. 10 engine to stop here.”

The cry of the engineer, “Hold on, No. 10!” was repeated and reechoed by a great many other voices in the crowd, though it was mingled and confounded with many other noises, such as the rumbling of the wheels upon the pavement, the dinging of the engine bells, and shouts and outcries from a hundred voices. At last, however, the men and boys attached to No. 10 seemed to understand that they were to “hold on;” and, accordingly, the engine gradually came to a stand, while the other, which was No. 6, as Rollo learned from a bright figure 6 which he saw tossing about in the air over the heads of those who were drawing it, moved on.

The men about No. 10 took out some long handles, which were secured by the side of the engine, and passed them through some iron rings, fitted to receive them; and then they all took hold, ten or fifteen men on each side ready to work the engine. Presently the order was given in the same hoarse and hollow voice from the speaking-trumpet, “Play away, No. 10!” and immediately the men began to work the long handles up and down, with quick and heavy strokes.

“Why, Jonas,” said Rollo, “what are they doing?”

“They are working this engine,” said Jonas.

“What for?” said Rollo; “they are not near the fire.”

“I suppose there is a reservoir near here,” said Jonas, “and they are driving the water from it along towards some engine that is near the fire.”

“How does the water go?” said Rollo.

“In a hose,” said Jonas.

“What is a hose?” asked Rollo.

“It is a long leather pipe or tube. Come out this way, and we shall find it, I suppose, lying along the street.”

So the boys pushed their way along beyond the engine, and presently the fire itself burst upon their view in all its glory. It was a store,—one of the stores of a block which extended along the whole street. The front was of brick, and the walls between the different stores of the block were also of brick, so that nothing but the inside and the roof could burn. But the whole interior of the building was on fire, the flames issuing from the windows, and rising in a great, bright, roaring pyramid above the roof, far up into the dark sky. The whole street, except exactly opposite to the fire, where it was too hot for persons to stand, was filled with men whose faces, which were all turned towards the fire, were so brightly illuminated by the light, that Rollo could see them more distinctly than if it had been day. From the midst of a dense crowd just beyond the fire, Rollo saw a slender white thread of water mounting up in a beautiful curve, and falling over upon the flames. It was the jet from an engine; but it seemed to produce no effect upon the flame whatever.

“There is the hose,” said Jonas, suddenly.

Rollo turned away from the fire to look at the hose which Jonas pointed out to him, lying upon the pavement. There were a great many persons coming and going, so that he could not see very well; but he perceived a long pipe of leather lying along the street, in a serpentine direction, and swelled out with the water which the engine was driving through it, as if it was just ready to burst.

“It looks like a snake,” said Rollo.

“Yes, and it hisses like a snake too,” replied Jonas.

Rollo listened, and he could just hear a hissing sound mingling with all the other noises. He stepped out into the street to see how the hissing sound was produced.

They found that at one of the joints of the hose there was a little leak, and the water spouted from it in a stream, which, though it was very small and slender, mounted as high as Rollo’s head. The light from the fire shone so brightly upon this part of the street that Rollo could see the operation very distinctly.

Jonas thought that it was not very safe for them to remain in the midst of the road much longer; so they went back to the sidewalk, and then began to move along towards the fire. The crowd was so dense that they could not get along very well; but at last they came to a place where they got up upon some steps, where they could see pretty well, only that Rollo was not tall enough. There were many others standing upon the steps, and Rollo could not see very well over their shoulders. There was, however, a pretty high stone post at the top of the flight of steps, and very near the house, where Jonas thought that perhaps Rollo could sit, if he could get him up there. Rollo was afraid that the place was not wide enough, for there was a ball upon the post, and he could only sit upon that part of the top of the post which was upon one side of the ball.

However, Rollo was so desirous of seeing them put out the fire, that he concluded to try, and so Jonas helped him climb up. He found the place a better one than he had expected. He clasped one hand around the ball, and he rested the other upon Jonas’s shoulder and by this means he found that he had a firm and comfortable seat; and the fire, with all the operations connected with it, were in full view before him.

Just as he got established in his seat, he saw a stream from another engine beginning to issue from its pipe, and to rise up towards the building. The man who held the pipe stood upon the top of the engine, and he held it in such a way as to direct it towards one of the upper windows. Rollo could see the red flame through the window, as the shutter had been burned, and all the glass had fallen away; and, now and then, a great puff of flame would come out, when any momentary change in the wind drove the fire in that direction. The stream of water went directly in at the window. At first, it produced very little effect; but presently he observed that it began to deaden the redness of the fire just within the window. Rollo thought that this engine was far more powerful than the one which he had noticed before. That still continued to play around behind the building. Rollo occasionally got a glimpse of other jets, coming from engines which were standing on that side. Sometimes these jets came away over the top of the building, and Rollo could see them broken into drops as their force was spent, but still shooting forward through the flames in regular pulsations, produced by the successive strokes of the engines from which they came.

By all these means, the fire was soon perceptibly diminished. The window into which the engine was playing soon ceased to look red at all; and presently Rollo saw a tall ladder rising slowly above the heads of the crowd. The lower end of it was nearly under the window, which he had been noticing, while the other end extended almost across the street, and slowly rose. Rollo was expecting every moment to see it fall back upon the heads of the people who were under it; but it did not. It ascended slowly and steadily, until the upper end passed over, and fell against the building, a little above the window. In a moment, a man appeared at the foot, climbing up the rounds laboriously, as if he was carrying up a burden which made him mount with difficulty. Rollo saw, pretty soon, that he had an engine pipe in his hands; and presently he observed that it was the same man whom he had seen before, holding the pipe of the engine, and directing the stream into the window. The man ascended slowly, dragging up the pipe, and the hose which was attached to the bottom of it, until, at length, when the hose became so long that he could not lift it any farther, another man took hold below, and presently another; and at last there were four men at different parts of the ladder, all lifting up the hose.

When the man at the top got the pipe up opposite to the window, he pointed it in, and then Rollo could see him looking down, and gesticulating very violently to those below. He seemed to be calling out to them; but there was so much noise that Rollo could not hear what he said. However, presently the man turned around towards the building again, and seemed to be attending to his pipe, and Rollo could see that the water was spouting through it very furiously into the building.

By this time, the fire had been so much deadened, by the various jets of water which had been poured upon it from all sides, that the flames no longer ascended above the roof, but, instead of flame, there was a tall column of dense white smoke, illuminated by the embers which still glowed below. Rollo and Jonas remained nearly half an hour, watching the progress of the extinguishing of the fire; and then, as Rollo began to feel his seat somewhat uncomfortable, they returned together to the hotel. Rollo said he wondered that the other buildings did not take fire; but Jonas told him that bricks were a pretty good non-conductor of heat, and that, if the walls which divided such a block were of proper thickness, one store was often burned out of the block, without setting fire to the adjoining buildings.

QUESTIONS.

Under what circumstances did Rollo first hear the alarm of fire? What did he observe in the street when he looked out the window? What is a reservoir? How was the water conveyed from the reservoir to the vicinity of the fire? Describe the successive steps of the process by which the fire was extinguished. What did Jonas say in regard to the reason why the fire was not communicated to the other buildings of the block?