Life in the Red Brigade | Page 8

did for his boots. He was forced to retreat, however, to
the window, where Bob Clazie had already presented his branch and
commenced a telling discharge on the fire.
"That's the way to do it," muttered Bob, as he directed the branch and
turned aside his head to avoid, as much as possible, the full volume of
the smoke.
"Let's get a breath o' fresh air," gasped Joe Dashwood, endeavouring to
squeeze past his comrade through the window.
At that moment a faint cry was heard. It appeared to come from an
inner room.
"Some one there, Joe," said Bob Clazie in a grave tone, but without
diverting his attention for an instant, from the duty in which he was
engaged.
Joe made no reply, but at once leaped back into the room, and, a second
time, felt his way round the walls. He came on another door. One blow
of the ponderous axe dashed it in, and revealed a bed-room not quite so
densely filled with smoke as the outer room. Observing a bed looming
through the smoke, he ran towards it, and struck his head against one of
the posts so violently that he staggered. Recovering he made a grasp at

the clothes, and felt that there was a human being wrapped tightly up in
them like a bundle. A female shriek followed. Joe Dashwood was not
the man to stand on ceremony in such circumstances. He seized the
bundle, straightened it out a little, so as to make it more portable, and
throwing it over his shoulder, made a rush towards the window by
which he had entered. All this the young fireman did with considerable
energy and haste, because the density of the smoke was increasing, and
his retreat might be cut off by the flames at any moment.
"Clear the way there!" he gasped, on reaching the window.
"All right," replied Bob Clazie, who was still presenting his branch
with untiring energy at the flames.
Joe passed out, got on the head of the escape, and, holding the bundle
on his shoulder with one hand, grasped the rounds of the ladder with
the other. He descended amid the cheers of the vast multitude, which
had by this time assembled to witness the fire.
As Joe hurried towards the open door of the nearest house, Betty, with
the thumbs, rushed frantically out, screaming, "Missis! oh! my! she'll
be burnt alive! gracious! help! fire! back room! first floor! oh, my!"
"Be easy, lass," cried Joe, catching the flying domestic firmly by the
arm, and detaining her despite her struggles.
"Let me go; missis! I forgot her!"
"Here she is," cried Joe, interrupting, "all safe. You come and attend to
her."
The reaction on poor Betty's feelings was so great that she went into
fits a second time, and was carried with her mistress into the house,
where the cook still lay in violent hysterics.
Joe laid the bundle gently on the bed, and looked quickly at the
bystanders. Observing several cool and collected females among them,
he pointed to the bundle, which had begun to exhibit symptoms of life,

and said briefly, "She's all right, look after her," and vanished like a
wreath of that smoke into which in another moment he plunged.
He was not a moment too soon, for he found Bob Clazie, despite his
fortitude and resolution, on the point of abandoning the window, where
the smoke had increased to such a degree as to render suffocation
imminent.
"Can't stand it," gasped Bob, scrambling a few paces down the ladder.
"Give us the branch, Bob, I saw where it was in fetchin' out the old
woman," said Joe in a stifled voice.
He grasped the copper tube from which the water spouted with such
force as to cause it to quiver and recoil like a living thing, so that, being
difficult to hold, it slipped aside and nearly fell. The misdirected
water-spout went straight at the helmet of a policeman, which it
knocked off with the apparent force of a cannon shot; plunged into the
bosom of a stout collier, whom it washed whiter than he had ever been
since the days of infancy, and scattered the multitude like chaff before
the wind. Seeing this, the foreman ordered "Number 3" engine, (which
supplied the particular branch in question), to cease pumping.
Joe recovered the erratic branch in a moment, and dragged it up the
escape, Bob, who was now in a breatheable atmosphere, helping to pass
up the hose. The foreman, who seemed to have acquired the power of
being in several places at one and the same moment of time, and whose
watchful eye was apparently everywhere, ordered Bob's brother David
and another man named Ned Crashington, to go up and look after Joe
Dashwood.