“Now, Walter,” said Kennedy, “as long as we have gone so far, we’ll ‘roll’ to every fire, just like the regulars.  We won’t take any chances of missing the firebug at any time of night or day.”

It proved to be a remarkably quiet evening with only one little blaze in a candy-shop on Seventh Avenue.  Most of the time we sat around trying to draw the men out about their thrilling experiences at fires.  But if there is one thing the fireman doesn’t know it is the English language when talking about himself.  It was quite late when we turned into the neat white cots upstairs.

We had scarcely fallen into a half doze in our strange surroundings when the gong downstairs sounded.  It was our signal.

We could hear the rapid clatter of the horses’ hoofs as they were automatically released from their stalls and the collars and harness mechanically locked about them.  All was stir, and motion, and shouts.  Craig and I had bounded awkwardly into our paraphernalia at the first sound.  We slid ungracefully down the pole and were pushed and shoved into our places, for scientific management in a New York fire-house has reached one hundred per cent. efficiency, and we were not to be allowed to delay the game.

The oil-torch had been applied to the engine, and it rolled forth, belching flames.  I was hanging on for dear life, now and then catching sight of the driver urging his plunging horses onward like a charioteer in a modern Ben Hur race.  The tender with Craig and McCormick was lost in the clouds of smoke and sparks that trailed behind us.  On we dashed until we turned into Sixth Avenue.  The glare of the sky told us that this time the firebug had made good.

“I’ll be hanged if it isn’t the Stacey store again,” shouted the man next me on the engine as the horses lunged up the avenue and stopped at the allotted hydrant.  It was like a war game.  Every move had been planned out by the fire-strategists, even down to the hydrants that the engines should take at a given fire.

Already several floors were aflame, the windows glowing like open-hearth furnaces, the glass bulging and cracking and the flames licking upward and shooting out in long streamers.  The hose was coupled up in an instant, the water turned on, and the limp rubber and canvas became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being forced through it.  Company after company dashed into the blazing “fireproof” building, urged by the hoarse profanity of the chief.

Twenty or thirty men must have disappeared into the stifle from which the police retreated.  There was no haste, no hesitation.  Everything moved as smoothly as if by clockwork.  Yet we could not see one of the men who had disappeared into the burning building.  They had been swallowed up, as it were.  For that is the way with the New York firemen.  They go straight to the heart of the fire.  Now and then a stream of a hose spat out of a window, showing that the men were still alive and working.  About the ground floors the red-helmeted salvage corps were busy covering up what they could of the goods with rubber sheets to protect them from water.  Doctors with black bags and white trousers were working over the injured.  Kennedy and I were busy about the engine, and there was plenty for us to do.