The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 32, 6 August 1903, Page 23

The Storyteller

HURLEY'S PROMOTION

Hurley v. as discharged from the service of a New Yoik Mkhm t.hlw.iv company loi wrecking his car in a collision with a fire-engine, and the railway thereby lost a moturman \vb n could run down the most, crowded street with a controller lull ahead, and who rang his gongs icgukuly by dancing frantic fabdangos on them when the hea\y goods-tiucks got on his tracks. Hurley tell then that the fire brigade owed him a living, having deprived him of one; and the political influence of his brother-in-law helped the fire commissioners to pay the debt. It followed that the brigade gained a probationer who loved excitement as a collie dog loves an open field, who could handle a foity-pound scaling-ladder from the shoulder with the muscles that had skidded car-wheels when he screwed down brakes, and who went up a windowed wall or took the thirty-five foot jump into the life-net in fire-drill at headquarters with the smile of a boy playing tag in a yaid. His teim oi practice and probation was all pure fun for him. He spent his days at headquarters and his nights at the station in Harlem, to which he had been provisionally assigned. He worked ofi ten pounds of fat, and he dipped his drooping black moustache until it stood out m a fierce bristle under his huge beak of nose His comrades called him ' Burly,' and he pawed at them with a bear-cub playfulness that left them bruised about the forearms He was happy. He had but one cause of dissatisfaction—the Harlem station was not a school of arduous training lie saw a sure prospect of something more exciting when he received his appointment as a fourthgrade fireman, detailed to a hook-and-ladder company that had seventy-five calls to answer on a first alarm in the heart of the diy-goods district ; and he chewed his moustache with one corner of his mouth and smiled crookedly out of the other. 'You'll straighten v our face before ) ou've finished with that,' they warned him. lie straightened it forthwith in a grin that curled evenly on both sides of his nose. ' I guess that's light,' he said and nodded. He repotted for duty at his new station on the following day, and the foreman looked him over with an official scowl Hurley saluted clumsily and stood stiff. He knew ('apt Dougherty by reputation as a gruff disciplinarian. The captain said, ' How much do you weigh ? ' ' One-scv cut v, sir,' Hurley .answered ' One-seventy ' ' he groaned. 'Do you know that truck weighs near ten thousand pounds already ? ' Hurley regarded the hook-and-ladder truck with an aggrieved air ' One-scwMit v ' They must think we're rolling an ox-cart Some of voull ha\c to get out and walk to the fires pretty soon ' ' This was evidently sarcasm. Hurley smiled at it with uneasiness. 'Frank,' the captain called to the assistant foreman, 'show this man his quartets ' You'll go on the bright work Do you understand ' } ' Hurley understood tnat he was to have charge of the shining brass ot the sliding poles and of the truck He said, ' Yes, sir ' ' and followed the lieutenant upstairs with an angry swing of the shoulders That was his introduction to Captain Dougherty There loilowed his meeting with the ten men of the company, a meeting that was a clumsy ceremony of hand-shakes and embarrassed gutturals. He was shown his cot in Hie bunk-room and the locker for his wardrobe, and then he was left to shift for himself proceeded to inspect with due icwicnce the truck's equipment of ladders, hooks and axes, shovels, picks, wrenches, bars, handlamps, respuators, battering-rams and what not He picked out his helmet and his 'turn-out coat' from the low of Uiein on the bed-ladders He inquired for and lound the cloth and chemical for polishing his ' bright work ' He studied the list of fire-alarms, patted the ho^es, and smiled at the ' jigger '—the jigger which would nng them oIT dov n the street like mad, clanging a wild bell and fight m e; w i,th the sleeves of their coats while they swayed on the jolting truck. 1 10 saw the stampede in his mind's eye, and wished that the bell would give its signal. It did not, and he went upstans then to the reading room to wait for it. Within an hour it was Known to every member of the company that the new man played a poorer game of checkers even than Gorman, the second driver of the truck, who had a fatal weakness for leading from the

double corner. And that was the beginning of Hurley's popularity with the ' blue shirts.' Captain Dougherty did not seem to see anything in tho reciuit excepting a hulking good nature which might easily be mistaken for the next of kin to stupidity. Hurley lay awake the greater p-art of that night listening in an excess of zeal lor a fire-alarm that was not rung in. In the morning he was heavy-eyed at roll-call and the) captain remarked it. A summons to a small fire that was black when the truck arrived to the scene, brought Hurley the last man to his place on the step, and that was another mark against him. He made a good record when ' taps ' called the crew to their places at mid-day, but he closed his eyes when he was at watch on the desk in the afternoon, and the captain accused him of being asleep there. Hurley did not argue. He did worse— he sulked. By the time he had turned in for the night he was discouraged, angry, and plainly marked for the captain's displeasure. The jigger exploded its alarm. The lights swam in his head as he sprang from his cot and tugged on his 1 turnout ' of trousers and high boots. He shot down the pole to the mam floor as if falling in a dream, and staggered to catch the side step as the great doors swung back and the truck rolled out in the darkness of the streets in a confusion of clattering hoofs and hisordered voices. He was wide awake with the first rush oi cold air across his face, but the ride that followed seemed still a nightmare— the three horses straining in their collars, the blown lights of the driver's lamps shining on the play of the muscles in their sleek flanks, the bell ringing furiously, and the silent men beside him on the step struggling into their oilskins while they clung to the side ladders of the truck. His own hands did not seem to belong to him ; they were a great distance from him on the ends of long arms. His helmet did not fit his head. He got one arm into his coat, and he was still fumbling for a second sleeve when the truck swung round a corner and he came into a street of smoke andthrobbing fire-engines and the hoarse hellowings of battalion chiefs and company firemen. lie looked ud from this turmoil to see smoke puffing from the middle windows of a five-storey building that seemed immeasurably high in the darkness and the deceptive play of light. Lines of hose hung from the lower sills and writhed in the doorways. His eye was caught by tho glare of flames shining on the glasses of a window , the panes burst and tinkled on the pavements ; .md then a stteam of water shot up to overwhelm this sudden bulliance m a cloud of smoke and steam. A rough hand thrust his arm into his coat and swung Imn lound. lie heard Captain Dougherty cry out an older, and he woke t~ find himself stumbling across the cobblestones with a steel tool in his hand. The men ahead of him were battering at the doois of the building next to that which was on fire. Both were wholesale clothing houses, as Hurley could see fiom their Mgn boards. The building was old lie knew it would be dry and unsafe He knew, too, that they were to make vents in the roof And then the door opened and the crew disappeared in the doorway, and he followed at full tilt to blunder up the stairs behind a handlamp that shone in the darkness ahead of him. Smoke pricked him in the eyes and stung in his nostuls There was someone behind him hurrying him forward He took the interminable steps three at a bound, and raced along the hallways, and what with the excitement and the pleasure he took in it, his heart-beats seemed to lift him from his feet. He scrambled panting up the ladder to the roof-trap, leaped a dividing parapet between the buildings and attacked the tin roofing with an eager jab of his tool Aiound him axe and hook and cutter tore and stripped and splintered tin and rafters and the glass and sash < f skylights, till the smoke began to curl upwards from huge gaps in the roof, and the men pushed back their helmets from their foreheads and wiped the sweat from their eyes. The captain was shouting orders at them from the top of the cornice, where he stood to watch the work in the street below They depended on him to warn them of aanger, and they worked with as little apparent apprehension of their personal safety as farm laborers digging in a field At. the captain's command a ladder was dragged over the parapet and lowered into the skylight. The assistant foreman and two men slid down it. A moment later Hurley heard the windows of the floor beneath him crash into the street. A draft of evilsmelhrig smoke from burning cloth burst up through the vents like fumes from a crater. ' .Mighty thick down there ! ' some one said. Hurley wondered how the three men could live in it. The captain leaned over the cornice, bawling his direc-

tions to some one in the lower windows. An answer came up thin and faint from below. There were anxious calls and answers down the roof Hurley understood from them that one of the three men liad been lost in the smoke. A 'rescuing party slid down the ladder after him. He was drawn up through the skylight and laid on the roof. Three of the crew fanned air into his lungs with their helmets, while Hurley and the others, at the captain's orders, dragged the ladddcr from the skylight and carried it over to the cornice where he stood. It was lowered over the front of the bmldinf till it hung by its hooks, and the two other men black as negroes, with red and watering eyes, climbed up it from the windows and hauled it up after them. The captain turned from conversation with them to order a fireman to report below that the roof was open and the fire eieeping along the floor below. The others waited. There was an explosion under their feet that shook the building. Hurley recognised it as the ' puff 'of the back draft. c Just missed it, Bill,' the assistant foreman said. Bill showed a row of white teeth in the black mask of his face. Sparks began to whirl up in the smoke from the vents, and the captain fumed at the slowness of the engine companies. He sent hall the men to report for work in the street. The others still waited. The smoke was growing ruddy with the flames at its base. There was a. sound of voices over the roof, and Hurley turned to see pipemen dragging an empty hose from the neighboring building. He ran with the others to help, and they drew the pipe from the trap in the roof until it stretched like an angleworm plucked from the clod. There was a shout of orders given and repeated, a breathless pause, and then the hose stiffened to the rotundity of a huge serpent, and poured its stream of water into the raw wound of tin and wood. Hurley shook the spray from his eyes and laughed. When he looked again the smoke was black , there was the top of a ladder pointing through it and the last of the pipemen was disappearing in the cloud. The captain cried : ' Well, boys, I guess there's nothing more to do here but the wetting down ! Better get below again.' The pipemen, following the proud tradition of the brigade, had gone to ' fight from the inside ' It seemed to Hurley as if it had all happened in a minute, and yet it was a good quarter of an hour since he had started up the stairs, with the assistant foreman treading on his heels. The fight had only ju.st begun and already it was over for him. The men were carrying their tools and ladders across the roof to take them below. He turned to follow them, disappointed that the fun had been so soon finished. But the hammering of the old roof, the explosion of the back draft, and the running to and fro of the crew had had an effect that had not been foreseen A beam cracked with the report of a pistol The captain wheeled with a cry of alarm. ' The tank !' he shouted, and threw out his arm towards it. Hurley, over his shoulder, saw the great water-tank that had been supported on rotten beams across the lower portion of the roof, fall, and felt the -weakened roof sink under his feet like the deck of a rolling ship. He sprang for the parapet and leaped upon it as his footing gave way beneath him, heard the rush of waters hiss above the snapping of the timbers, heard the men cry out in horror, and turned to find a dead silence broken by a single low groan from the wreckage hidden in the smoke. The three pipemen who had gone down the skylight ladder, were imprisoned there. The four icmaining truckmen had escaped. There was no confusion. The captain railed out his ord&rs quickly and coolly— to one to repoiL to the chief, to another to lead up another line of hose, to a third to biing up the life lines from the truck, to a fourth to warn the men below that the whole weight of the roof now rested on the beams of the floor that was already burning and might fall at any moment. Hurley did not wait for any orders. He had but one thought in mind, to save the men who would be slowly roasted between burning floor and burning roof Snatching an axe from the nearest hand he ran along the parapet to the cornice, and began to creep down the incline of the fallen roofing into the smoke. He heard the captain shout, ' Back there ' Three's fnough ! ' and then the smoke blew over him in a wave that blinded him, choked him, and seemed to fill his ears even, so that he heard nothing more. The tin grew hot under his hands. His throat deemed to contract convulsively so he could not breathe He shambled forward desperately, and the slope steepened, and he pitched forward, sliding on his stomach, to find air in a low current along the tin. A groan sounded in the pit ahead of him. He turned to get his feet foremost, thrust himself forward, and slid down the incline on knees and elbows, clinging to

his axe ; dropped over a rough edge of tin that cut his hands ; struck with his feet something soft among the timbers, and knew from the groan that answered that he had found one of the men. What followed was never afterwards clear in Hurley's mind He was like a drowning man held below water in an entanglement of wreckage, gasping, suffocating, and fighting in the darkness to get himself free. He found that the pipeman lay unconscious, with a broken leg caught under a beam, and when Hurley struggled to raise the beam he moaned, making a dry cluck'ng in his mouth like a child in a fever. Hurley got his great hands under the timber and strained to raise the broken ends of it until the cords in his back pained at the roots. Then he fell on it furiously with his axe, his hoad swimming ; and the blows cut into the timber with a sound that grew fainter and fainter to him. He was dizzy and bewildered. He was growing sick and weak with the heat. The axe became so heavy that he could hardly lift it. His knees began to tremble, there was the roar of a whirlpool in his head, and he sank on his face and fainted. On the parapet of the neighboring building Captain Dougherty abused Hurley, the pipemen, the roof, the fire, and his own keen eyes that had failed to note the insecurity of the water-tank. He stamped on the coping like a sailor on his deck. He had given his orders. There was nothing to do now but to wait. It was a thing Captain Dougherty had never learned to do. When a truckman returned with the lifelines, he snatched the ropes from him, tied one quickly under his own arms, attached the other to his wrist and ordered them to lower him to Hurley. They braced themselves for his weight. He threw a leg over the parapet. ' Hurry there, men ! ' he shouted to the pipemen appearing with the hose. ' Hurry there ! Train her on the blaze in the middle ! All right. Lower away.' A shower of water from above revived Hurley in the wreckage. His helmet had fallen off, and the cool stream poured on his head. He struggled to his feet and attacked the joist with his empty hands. He was delirious. ' You would, would you ?' he kept muttering. ' You would, would you ? ' In his madness he fought with the beam until his hands were numb with bruises, and then he straightened up and threw himself at it, and his huge bulk came down like a sack of sand on the end of it and finished the work his axe had begun. The rest was a delirium— years of delirium— in which he finally got the pipeman free and passed him to captain Dougherty, who appeared through the smoke from nowhere He staggered and fell back in the timbers when he was iehe\ed of his burden, and he rested happily ihere until some one tied a rope around him and stood him up again, despite his protests. The roof fell from his feet, and he seemed to soar up miles into the clouds struggling. lie thought he had been tied to a balloon and he was talking foolishness when the men lifted him over the parapet and laid him on the roof. He was saved, and he had saved the only pipeman who had escaped. The floor had fallen with the others just as it had come to him. He knew nothing of it until the following day, when he found himself lying on his back between the cool sheets of a hospital cot, and passed his bandaged hands over the bandages of his face He heard Captain DougheTty say, ' He's all right. A bit singed, I guess. How are his eyes ? ' A strange voice answered, ' We'll know to-morrow.' Hurley said weakly, ' They're all right. I can see down here,' and he laid his hand on the side of his nose, where there was glimmer of light below the dressings. The captain laughed. ' Couldn't bandage over that beak, eh ? Lie quiet now, Hurley. We want you back to the house as soon as you can get on your feet. The chief's promoted you.' Hurley tried to understand what that meant, but the pain in his head prevented him. ' Where,' he said, ' where was the balloon ? ' They called him ' Balloon ' Hurley at the station when he reported for duty three days later, but he had been entered on the roll of honor, and his promotion had increased his pay. Captain Dougherty shook hands with him to congratulate him. ' You should have waited for orders, Hurley,' he said gruffly. ' Yes, sir,' Hurley apologised ' I didn't know.' 'No harm done,' the captain said. ' You'll be on the ladder committee. There's another man on the bright work '—"The Youth's Companion.'