Life in the Red Brigade: London Fire Brigade

Before the engine from Regent Street came on the ground, two manual engines from Kensington and Notting Hill had arrived, and opened water on the foe. At first their shot fell harmlessly on the roaring furnace; but by the time the “steamer” had got ready for action, some little effect was beginning to be produced. When this great gun, so to speak, began to play, and sent a thick continuous stream through the windows, like an inexhaustible water mitrailleuse, clouds of white steam mingled with the black smoke, and varied the aspect of the fire, but did not appear to lessen its fury in any degree. Just then another manual engine dashed into the square at full gallop, and formed up. Before it had well taken a position, another “steamer,” with three horses, came swinging round the corner, and fell into the ranks. The panting steeds were unharnessed, the bold charioteers leaped down, the suction-pipe was dipped into the water-trough, and the hose attached. As two engines cannot “drink” at the same plug, a canvas trough with an iron frame is put over the plug, having a hole in its bottom, which fits tightly round the plug. It quietly fills, and thus two or more engines may do their work convivially—dip in their suction-pipes, and “drink” simultaneously at the same fountain.

“Down with her!” shouted the man who held the “branch,” or nozzle, at the end of the hose.

A steam whistle gives a shrill, short reply; the engine quivers under the power of man’s greatest servant, and another battery opens on the foe.

But London firemen are not content to play at long bowls. While the artillery goes thus vigorously into action, the helmets of the men are seen gleaming and glancing everywhere amid the smoke, searching for weak points, turning the enemy’s flanks, and taking him in rear. Hose are dragged through neighbouring houses, trailing their black coils like horrid water snakes, through places were such things were never meant to be. If too short, additional lengths are added, again and again, till the men who hold the branches gain points of vantage on adjoining roofs or outhouses, until, at last from below, above, in front, and behind, cataracts of water dash into the glowing furnace.

The fire-escape had been first to reach the ground after the alarm was given, this being the instrument nearest to the scene of conflagration. It happened that night to be in charge of David Clazie, a brother of Comrade Bob. Being a smart young fellow, David, had—with the assistance of two early risers who chanced to be at hand, and the policeman on the beat—run up his escape, and put it in position before the fire had gained its full force. The gentleman of the house had already got out, and fled in his night garments; but the fire had rendered the staircase impassable, so that the cook, the many-thumbed Betty, and the old lady, who was the gentleman’s mother, were imprisoned in the upper floor.

David Clazie did not learn this from the gentleman, however. That amiable character had received such a fright, that he had taken himself off, no one—except the individual aforementioned—knew whither. Fortunately, Betty announced the fact of her existence by rushing to a window and shrieking. David ran his escape towards the window, mounted the ladder, carried the damsel down, bore her, kicking, into a neighbouring house, and left her in fits. Meanwhile the cook rushed to the same window, shrieked, and fell back half-suffocated with the smoke which just then surrounded her. A policeman gallantly ran up the escape, jumped into the room, gathered up the cook with great difficulty—for she was unusually fat and the smoke very suffocating—carried her down, bore her to the same house where Betty lay, and left her there in violent hysterics.

As neither of them could answer questions, it could not be ascertained whether there were any more people in the burning house. David therefore explored it as far as was possible in the circumstances, and much more than was safe for himself, but found no one. After nearly choking himself, therefore, he drew aside the escape to prevent its being burned.

When the engines came up, however, it was again brought into play, to enable the firemen to get up with their “branches” to the upper windows.

“Try that window, Dashwood,” said the officer of the station to which Joe belonged, pointing to a window on the second floor. “There ain’t much smoke coming out.”

Before he had done speaking, Joe and a comrade had pushed the escape towards the window in question. He ascended and leaped into the room, but could scarcely see for the smoke. Knowing that the air in a burning house is clearer near the floor, he stooped as low as possible, and went round the room guiding himself by the walls. Coming to a door he seized the handle and tried to open it, but found it locked, and the handle so hot that he was forced to let go abruptly. He seized a chair, tried to burst it open with a blow, and shivered the chair to atoms, but did not force the door. A powerful effort with his foot also failed. Rushing to the window he got out on the escape, and shouted:—

“The axe, lads, look sharp and pass up the hose. We’ll get at it here.”

A large heavy axe was handed up by one fireman, while another let down a rope, to which the end of the hose was attached and hauled up.

Joe seized the axe, returned to the door, and, with one blow, dashed it open.

Flames leaped upon him, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity, licked hungrily round his legs, and kissed his whiskers—of which, by the way, he was rather proud; and with good reason, for they were very handsome whiskers. But Joe cared no more for them at that moment than he 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.

Meanwhile Joe shouted, “Down with Number 3;” by which he meant, “up with as much water as possible from Number 3, and as fast as you can!” and sprang into the room from which he had just rescued the old woman. In passing out with her he had observed a glimmer of flame through the door which he had first broken open, and which, he reflected while descending the escape, was just out of range of Bob Clazie’s branch. It was the thought of this that had induced him to hurry back so promptly; in time, as we have seen, to relieve his comrade. He now pointed the branch at the precise spot, and hit that part of the fire right in its heart. The result was that clouds of steam mingled with the smoke. But Joe was human after all. The atmosphere, or, rather, the want of atmosphere, was too much for him. He was on the point of dropping the branch, and rushing to the window for his life, when Ned Crashington, feeling his way into the room, tumbled over him.

Speech was not required in the circumstances. Ned knew exactly what to do, and Joe knew that he had been sent to relieve him. He therefore delivered the branch to Ned, and at once sprang out on the escape, where he encountered David Clazie.

“Go in, Davy, he can’t stand it long,” gasped Joe.

“No fears of ’im,” replied Davy, with a smile, as he prepared to enter the window; “Ned can stand hanythink a’most. But, I say, send up some more ’ands. It takes two on us to ’old that ’ere branch, you know.”

The brass helmets of more hands coming up the escape were observed as he spoke, for the foreman saw that this was a point of danger, and, like a wise general, had his reserves up in time.

David Clazie found Ned standing manfully to the branch. Ned was noted in the Red Brigade as a man who could “stand a’most anything,” and who appeared to cherish a martyr-like desire to die by roasting or suffocation. This was the more surprising that he was not a boastful or excitable fellow, but a silent, melancholy, and stern man, who, except when in action, usually seemed to wish to avoid observation. Most of his comrades were puzzled by this compound of character, but some of them hinted that Crashington’s wife could have thrown some light on the subject. Be this as it may, whenever the chief or the foreman of the Brigade wanted a man for any desperate work, they invariably turned to Ned Crashington. Not that Ned was one whit more courageous or willing to risk his life than any of the other men, all of whom, it must be remembered, were picked for courage and capacity for their special work; but he combined the greatest amount of coolness with the utmost possible recklessness, besides being unusually powerful, so that he could be depended on for wise as well as desperate action. Joe Dashwood was thought to be almost equal to Ned—indeed, in personal activity he was superior; but there was nothing desperate in Joe’s character. He was ever ready to dare anything with a sort of jovial alacrity, but he did not appear, like Ned, to court martyrdom.

While Ned and David subdued the flames above, Joe descended the escape, and being by that time almost exhausted, sat down to rest with several comrades who had endured the first shock of battle, while fresh men were sent to continue the fight.

“Have a glass, Joe?” said one of the firemen, coming round with a bottle of brandy.

“No, thank ’ee,” said Joe, “I don’t require it.”

“Hand it here,” said a man who stood leaning against the rails beside him, “my constitution is good, like the British one, but it’s none the worse for a drop o’ brandy after such tough work.”

There was probably truth in what the man said. Desperate work sometimes necessitates a stimulant; nevertheless, there were men in the Red Brigade who did their desperate work on nothing stronger than water, and Joe was one of these.

In three hours the fire was subdued, and before noon of that day it was extinguished. The “report” of it, as published by the chief of the Fire-Brigade next morning, recorded that a house in Ladbroke Square, occupied by Mr Blank, a gentleman whose business was “private”—in other words, unknown—had been set on fire by some “unknown cause,” that the whole tenement had been “burnt out” and “the roof off,” and that the contents of the building were “insured in the Phoenix.”

Some of the firemen were sent home about daybreak, when the flames first began to be mastered.

Joe was among these. He found Mary ready with a cup of hot coffee, and the rosebud, who had just awakened, ready with a kiss. Joe accepted the second, swallowed the first, stretched his huge frame with a sigh of weariness, remarked to Mary that he would turn in, and in five minutes thereafter was snoring profoundly.

Chapter Three

One pleasant afternoon in spring David Clazie and Ned Crashington sat smoking together in front of the fire in the lobby of the station, chatting of hair-breadth escapes by flood and fire.

“It’s cold enough yet to make a fire a very pleasant comrade—w’en ’e’s inside the bars,” observed David.

“H’m,” replied Crashington.

As this was not a satisfactory reply, David said so, and remarked, further, that Ned seemed to be in the blues.

“Wotever can be the matter wi’ you, Ned,” said David, looking at his companion with a perplexed air; “you’re a young, smart, ’ealthy fellar, in a business quite to your mind, an’ with a good-lookin’ young wife at ’ome, not to mention a babby. W’y wot more would you ’ave, Ned? You didn’t ought for to look blue.”

“Pr’aps not,” replied Ned, re-lighting his pipe, and puffing between sentences, “but a man may be in a business quite to his mind and have a good-looking wife, and a babby, and health to boot, without bein’ exactly safe from an attack of the blues now and then, d’ye see? ‘It ain’t all gold that glitters.’ You’ve heard o’ that proverb, no doubt?”

“Well, yes,” replied Clazie.

“Ah. Then there’s another sayin’ which mayhap you’ve heard of too: ‘every man’s got a skeleton in the cupboard.’”

“I’ve heard o’ that likewise,” said Clazie, “but it ain’t true; leastways, I have got no skeleton in none o’ my cupboards, an’, wot’s more, if I ’ad, I’d pitch him overboard.”

“But what if he was too strong for you?” suggested Ned.

“Why, then—I don’t know,” said Clazie, shaking his head.

Before this knotty point could be settled in a satisfactory manner, the comrades were interrupted by the entrance of a man. He was a thick-set, ill-favoured fellow, with garments of a disreputable appearance, and had a slouch that induced honest men to avoid his company. Nevertheless, Ned Crashington gave him a hearty “good afternoon,” and shook hands.

“My brother-in-law, Clazie,” said Ned, turning and introducing him, “Mr Sparks.”

Clazie was about to say he “was ’appy to,” etcetera, but thought better of it, and merely nodded as he turned to the grate and shook the ashes out of his pipe.

“You’ll come and have a cup of tea, Phil? Maggie and I usually have it about this time.”

Phil Sparks said he had no objection to tea, and left the station with Ned, leaving David Clazie shaking his head with a look of profound wisdom.

“You’re a bad lot, you are,” growled David, after the man was gone, “a werry bad lot, indeed!”

Having expressed his opinion to the clock, for there was no one else present, David thrust both hands into his pockets, and went out to take an observation of the weather.

Meanwhile Ned Crashington led his brother-in-law to his residence, which, like the abodes of the other firemen, was close at hand. Entering it he found his “skeleton” waiting for him in the shape of his wife. She was anything but a skeleton in aspect, being a stout, handsome woman, with a fine figure, an aquiline nose, and glittering black eyes.

“Oh, you’ve come at last,” she said in a sharp, querulous tone, almost before her husband had entered the room. “Full ten minutes late, and I expected you sooner than usual to-night.”

“I didn’t know you expected me sooner, Maggie. Here’s Phil come to have tea with us.”

“Oh, Phil, how are you?” said Mrs Crashington, greeting her brother with a smile, and shaking him heartily by the hand.

“Ah, if you’d only receive me with a smile like that, how different it might be,” thought Ned; but he said nothing.

“Now, then, stoopid,” cried Mrs Crashington, turning quickly round on her husband, as if to counteract the little touch of amiability into which she had been betrayed, “how long are you going to stand there in people’s way staring at the fire? What are you thinking of?”

“I was thinking of you, Maggie.”

“H’m! thinking no good of me, I dare say,” replied Maggie, sharply.

“Did your conscience tell you that?” asked Ned, with a heightened colour.

Maggie made no reply. One secret of her bad temper was that she had all her life been allowed to vent it, and now that she was married she felt the necessity of restraining it very irksome. Whenever she had gone far enough with Ned, and saw that he was not to be trifled with, she found that she possessed not only power to control her temper, but the sense, now and then, to do so! On the present occasion she at once busied herself in preparing tea, while Ned sat down opposite his brother-in-law, and, taking Fred, his only child, a handsome boy of about five years of age, on his knee, began to run his fingers through his jet black curly hair.

“Did you get your tasks well to-day, Fred?” asked Ned.

“No, father.”

“No?” repeated Ned in surprise; “why not?”

“Because I was playin’ with May Dashwood, father.”

“Was that a good reason for neglecting your dooty?” demanded Ned, shaking his head reproachfully, yet smiling in spite of himself.

“Iss, father,” replied the boy boldly.

“You’re wrong, Fred. No doubt you might have had a worse reason, but play is not a good reason for neglect of dooty. Only think—what would be said to me if I was called to a fire, and didn’t go because I wanted to play with May Dashwood?”

“But I was sent for,” pleaded Fred. “Mrs Dashwood had a big—oh, such a big washin’, an’ sent to say if I might be let go; an’ mother said I might, so I went.”

“Ah, that alters the case, Fred,” replied his father, patting the boy’s head. “To help a woman in difficulties justifies a’most anything. Don’t it, Phil?”

Thus appealed to, Phil said that he didn’t know, and, what was more, he didn’t care.

“Now don’t sit talkin’ nonsense, but sit in to tea,” said Mrs Crashington.

The stout fireman’s natural amiability had been returning like a flood while he conversed with Fred, but this sharp summons rather checked its flow; and when he was told in an exasperating tone to hand the toast, and not look like a stuck pig, it was fairly stopped, and his spirit sank to zero.

“Have you got anything to do yet?” he asked of Phil Sparks, by way of cheering up a little.

“No, nothin’,” replied Sparks; “leastways nothin’ worth mentionin’.”

“I knew his last application would fail,” observed Maggie, in a quietly contemptuous tone.

His last application had been made through Ned’s influence and advice, and that is how she came to know it would fail.

Ned felt a rising of indignation within him which he found it difficult to choke down, because it was solely for his wife’s sake that he had made any effort at all to give a helping hand to surly Phil Sparks, for whom he entertained no personal regard. But Ned managed to keep his mouth shut. Although a passionate man, he was not ill-tempered, and often suffered a great deal for the sake of peace.

“London,” growled Sparks, in a tone of sulky remonstrance, “ain’t a place for a man to git on in. If you’ve the luck to have friends who can help you, an’ are willin’, why it’s well enough; but if you haven’t got friends, its o’ no manner o’ use to try anything, except pocket-pickin’ or house-breakin’.”

“Come, Phil,” said Ned, laughing, as he helped himself to a huge round of buttered toast, “I ’ope you han’t made up your mind to go in for either of them professions, for they don’t pay. They entail hard work, small profits, an’ great risk—not to mention the dishonesty of ’em. But I don’t agree with you about London neither.”

“You never agree with nobody about anythink,” observed Mrs Crashington, in a low tone, as if the remark were made to the teapot; but Ned heard it, and his temper was sorely tried again, for, while the remark was utterly false as regarded himself, it was particularly true as regarded his wife. However, he let it pass, and continued—

“You see, Phil, London, as you know, is a big place, the population of it being equal to that of all Scotland—so I’m told, though it ain’t easy to swallow that. Now it seems to me that where there’s so many people an’ so much doin’, it ought to be the very place for smart, stout fellows like you. If I was you, I’d—”

“Yes, but you ain’t him,” interrupted Mrs Crashington, testily, “so it won’t do him much good to tell what you would or wouldn’t do.”

“I’ve heard of wives, Maggie, who sometimes tried to be agreeable,” said Ned, gravely.

“If I don’t suit you, why did you marry me?” demanded Maggie.

“Ah, why indeed?” said Ned, with a frown. At this critical point in the conversation, little Fred, who was afraid that a storm was on the point of bursting forth, chanced to overturn his tin mug of tea. His mother was one of those obtuse women who regard an accident as a sin, to be visited by summary punishment. Her usual method of inflicting punishment was by means of an open-handed slap on the side of the head. On this occasion she dealt out the measure of justice with such good-will, that poor little Fred was sent sprawling and howling on the floor.

This was too much for Ned, who was a tender-hearted man. The blood rushed to his face; he sprang up with such violence as to overturn his chair, seized his cap, and, without uttering a word, dashed out of the room, and went downstairs three steps at a time.

What Ned meant to do, or where to go, of course no one could tell, for he had no definite intentions in his own mind, but his energies were unexpectedly directed for him. On rushing out at the street door, he found himself staggering unexpectedly in the arms of Bob Clazie.

“Hullo! Bob, what’s up?”

“Turn out!” said Bob, as he wheeled round, and ran to the next fireman’s door.