Robert Michael Ballantyne
Life in the Red Brigade: London Fire Brigade
During one of these a block of private dwellings nearest to the conflagration was set on fire. So intent was every one on the great fire that this incidental one was not observed until it had gained considerable headway. The buildings were very old and dry, so that, before an engine could be detached from the warehouses, it was in a complete blaze. Most of the inhabitants escaped by the chief staircase before it became impassable, and one or two leaped from the lower windows.
It chanced that Joe Dashwood’s engine was nearest to this house at the time, and was run up to it.
“Now then, lads, look alive,” said Joe, as the men affixed the hose and suction-pipe.
“Out o’ the way!” cried Ned Crashington to two boys who appeared to be rather curious about the operations of the firemen.
“I say,” exclaimed the Bloater in great excitement, “why—that’s the ’ouse w’ere Martha lives!”
“Who’s Martha?” asked Ned, without interrupting his operation of screwing on an additional length of hose.
“W’y, the friend o’ Joe Dashwood’s wife—Martha—Martha Reading, you know.”
“Eh!” exclaimed Ned, looking up.
At that moment Martha herself appeared at a window in the upper storey, waving her arms and shrieking wildly for help. Men were seen endeavouring to bring forward a fire-escape, but the crowd was so dense as to render this an unusually difficult and slow operation.
Without uttering a word, Ned Crashington dashed up the blazing staircase. For a moment he was lost to view, but quickly reappeared, attempting to cross a half-charred beam which overhung a yawning gulf of fire where the first and second floors had just fallen in. Suddenly a dense mass of smoke surrounded him. He staggered, threw up his arms, and was seen to fall headlong into the flames. A deep groan, or cry of horror, arose from the crowd, and wild shouts of “fetch a ladder,” “bring up the escape,” were heard, while poor Martha got out on the window-sill to avoid the flames, which were rapidly drawing towards and almost scorching her.
Just then a man was seen to dash furiously through the crowd, he fought his way madly—knocking down all who opposed him. Gaining the door of the burning house he sprang in.
“I say,” whispered Little Jim, in an excited voice, “it’s Phil Sparks!”
“I’m glad to hear it,” observed a quiet, broad-shouldered man, who stood near two policemen, to whom he winked knowingly.
The Bloater attempted to move off, but one of the policemen detained him. The other detained Little Jim.
Meanwhile the crowd looked for Phil’s reappearance on the beam from which poor Ned Crashington had fallen, but Phil knew the house better than Ned. He gained the upper floor by a back stair, which was not quite impassable; seized Martha in his arms, just as she was about to leap into the street, and dragged her back into the smoke and flames. It appeared almost certain that both must have perished; but in a few seconds the man was seen to descend the lower stair with the woman in his arms, and in another moment a wild enthusiastic cheer burst from the vast multitude as he leaped into the street.
Laying Martha gently down on a doorstep, Sparks bent over her, and whispered in her ear. She appeared to have swooned, but opened her eyes, and gazed earnestly in the face of her deliverer.
“The Lord must have sent you to save me, Phil; He will save you also, if you will trust Him.”
“Forgive me, Martha, I was hard on you, but—”
“God bless you, Phil—”
“Clear the way there,” cried a commanding voice; “here, doctor, this way.”
The crowd opened. A medical man came forward and examined Martha, and pronounced her to be only slightly injured. Several men then raised her and carried her towards a neighbouring house. Phil Sparks was about to follow, but the quiet man with the broad shoulders touched him gently on the arm, and said that he was “wanted.”
“Sorry to interrupt you in such a good work, but it can’t be helped. Other people can take care of her now, you know; come along.”
Sparks’ first impulse was to knock the quiet man down and fly, but he felt a restraining power on his other arm, and, looking round, observed a tall policeman at his side. As if by magic, another tall policeman appeared in front of him, and a third behind him. He suddenly bent down his head and suffered himself to be led away. Seeing this, the Bloater and Little Jim wrenched themselves from the grasp of their respective captors, dived between the legs of the bystanders, as eels might do among sedges, and vanished, to their own inexpressible delight and the total discomfiture of the “bobbies.” They met a few minutes later at a well-known rendezvous.
“I wish ’e ’adn’t bin took,” said the Bloater with a look of regret on his expressive though dirty countenance.
“Poor Martha!” said Little Jim, almost crying as he thought of her. “’Ow much d’you think ’e’ll get, Bloater?”
“Twenty years at least; p’r’aps go for life; you see it’s an aggrawated case. I’ve bin makin’ partikler inquiries, and I finds ’e’s bin raisin’ no end o’ fires doorin’ the last six months—kep’ the Red Brigade trottin’ about quite in a surprisin’ way. I rather fear that ’e’ll be let in for ever an’ a day.”
The Bloater was not quite correct in his guess. When the trial came on, to the surprise of all, especially of his “pals,” Phil Sparks pleaded guilty! Partly in consideration of this, and partly on account of his last courageous act in saving the girl, he was let off with fifteen years penal servitude.
But, to return from this episode. The great fire at the docks, after gutting several warehouses, was finally subdued. And what of the loss? A hundred thousand pounds did not cover it, and every insurance office in London suffered! In addition to this, several persons lost their lives, while the Red Brigade, besides having some of their number more or less severely injured, lost one of its best and bravest men.
Gallant Ned Crashington’s fighting days were over. His mangled remains were gathered up next morning, and, a few days later, were conveyed by his comrades to their last resting-place.
It is no easy matter to move the heart of London. That vast nation-in-a-city has too many diverse interests to permit of the eyes of all being turned, even for a moment, upon one thing. Nevertheless the fireman’s funeral seemed to cause the great cord to vibrate for a little. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to witness the cortège. Ned’s coffin was drawn, military fashion, on one of the engines peculiar to his profession, with his helmet and hatchet placed upon the lid. The whole of the force of the brigade that could be spared followed him in uniform, headed by their chief, and accompanied by a large detachment of the police force. The procession was imposing, and the notices that appeared next day in all the papers were a touching tribute of respect to the self-sacrificing fireman, who, as one of these papers said, “left a widow and son, in poor circumstances, to mourn his early death.”
Ah, these things were soon forgotten in the rush of the world’s business by all save that widow and son, and one or two bosom friends. Even the men of the Red Brigade appeared to forget the fallen hero very soon. We say “appeared,” because there were some among them who mourned Ned as a dear brother, chief among whom was Joe Dashwood. But whatever the feelings of the firemen might have been, theirs was a warfare that allowed no time for the undue indulgence or exhibition of grief. The regular “calls” and duties went on steadily, sternly, as if nothing had occurred, and before Ned’s remains had lain a night in their last resting-place, many of his old comrades were out again doing fierce battle with the restless and untameable flames.
Chapter Nine
Years passed away, and with them many old things vanished, while many novelties appeared, but the Red Brigade remained much as it was, excepting that it was, if possible, smarter and more energetic than ever.
In the lobby of our West-end station one pleasant summer evening, the men sat and stood about the open door beside the trim engines and matériel of their profession, chatting heartily as men are won’t to do when in high health and spirits. There were new faces among them, but there were also several that had long been familiar there. The stalwart form of Joe Dashwood was there, so little altered by time that there was nothing about him to tell that he was passing the period of middle-age, save a few grey hairs that mingled here and there with the dark curls on his temples. Bob Clazie was there also, but he had not stood the trials of his profession so well as Joe—probably his constitution was not so strong. A disagreeable short cough harassed him, though he made light of it. Frequent scorching, smoking, and partial suffocation had increased his wrinkles and rendered his eyelids permanently red. Nevertheless, although nearly fifty years old, Bob Clazie was still one of the best men in the Brigade.
Joe Dashwood wore a pair of brass epaulettes on his shoulders, which indicated that he had attained to the highest rank in the service, short of the chief command.
He was giving directions to one of the younger men of the force, when a tall strapping young man, with a plain but open and singularly pleasing countenance entered, and going up to him shook him warmly by the hand.
“Well, Bob, what’s the news? you seem excited this evening,” said Joe.
“So I am, Joe; and with good reason too, for several pleasant things have happened to-day. In the first place, my friend and patron—”
“That’s the old gentleman with the ruddy face and the bald head?” interrupted Joe.
“Yes, and with the kind heart. Don’t ever omit the kind heart, Joe, in your description of him, else you’ll only have painted half the portrait.”
“Well, but the kind heart ain’t quite so visible at first sight as the ruddy face and bald head, you know.”
“Perhaps not; but if you watched him long enough to see him act, you’d perceive the kind heart as plain as if it hung at his button-hole, and beat like a sixty-horse-power steam-engine outside his ribs instead of inside,” said the strapping young man with quite a glow of enthusiasm. “Oh, if you could only see how that old gentleman labours, and strives, and wears himself out, in his desire to rescue what they call our Street Arabs, you couldn’t help loving him as I do. But I’m wandering from the pleasant things I’ve got to tell about. Through his influence my friend Jim has obtained a good appointment on the Metropolitan Railway, which gives him a much better salary than he had in Skrimp’s office, and opens up a prospect of promotion; so, although it sends him underground before his natural time, he says he is quite content to be buried alive, especially as it makes the prospect of his union with a very small and exceedingly charming little girl with black eyes not quite so remote as it was. In the second place, you’ll be glad to hear that the directors of the insurance office with which I am connected have raised my salary, influenced thereto by the same old gentleman with the ruddy face, bald head, and kind heart—”
“Coupled with your own merits, Bob,” suggested Joe.
“I know nothing about that,” replied the strapping young man with a smile, “but these pleasant pieces of good fortune have enabled me and Jim to carry out a plan which we have long cherished—to lodge together, with Martha Reading as our landlady. In truth, anticipating some such good fortune as has been sent to us, we had some time ago devoted part of our savings to the purpose of rescuing poor Martha from that miserable needlework which has been slowly killing her so long. We have taken and furnished a small house, Martha is already installed as the owner, and we go there to-night for the first time, as lodgers.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Joe, laughing; “why, Bob, you and your friend act with as much promptitude as if you had been regularly trained in the Fire-Brigade.”
“We received much of our training from it, if not in it,” returned the strapping young man with the plain but pleasant countenance. “Don’t you remember, Joe, how perseveringly we followed you in former days when I was the Bloater and he was Little Jim?”
“Remember it! I should think I do,” replied Joe. “How glad my Mary will be when she hears what you have done.”
“But that’s not all my news,” continued the Bloater, (if we may presume to use the old name). “Last, but not least, Fred has asked me to be his groom’s-man. He wrote me a very pathetic letter about it, but omitted to mention the day—not to be wondered at in the circumstances. Poor Fred, his letter reminded me of the blotted copies which I used to write with such trouble and sorrow at the training school to which my patron sent me.”
“There’s reason for the blotted letter besides the excitement of his approaching marriage,” said Joe. “He hurt his hand the last fire he attended, and it’s in a sling just now, so he must have taken it out, for temporary duty when he wrote to you. The truth is that Fred is too reckless for a fireman. He’s scarcely cool enough. But I can inform you as to the day; it is Thursday next. See that you are up to time, Bob.”
“No fear of me being late,” replied the Bloater. “By the way, have you heard of that new method of putting out fires that somebody has invented?”
“I did hear of some nonsensical plan,” replied Joe, with a slight expression of contempt, “but I don’t think it worth while to pay attention to things o’ this sort. There’s nothin’ can beat good cold water.”
“I’m not so sure of that, Joe,” replied his friend gravely. “I have been reading an account of it in the Insurance Guardian, and it seems to me that there is something worth attending to in the new plan. It looks as if there was life in it, for a company is to be got up called the ‘Fire and Water Company.’”
“But what is this new plan?” asked Joe, sending forth a violent puff from his pipe, as if to indicate that it would all end in smoke.
“Well, I’m not sure that I’ve got a correct notion of it myself, but my impression is that carbonic acid gas is the foundation-principle of it. Fire cannot exist in the presence of this gas—wherever it goes extinction of fire is instantaneous, which is more than you can say for water, Joe; for as you know well, fire, when strong enough, can turn that into steam as fast as you can pour it on, and after getting rid of it in this way, blaze up as furious as ever. What this company proposes to do is to saturate water with this carbonic acid gas mixed with nitrogen, and then pour that prepared water on fires. Of course, if much water were required, such a plan would never succeed, but a very small quantity is said to be sufficient. It seems that some testing experiments of a very satisfactory kind have been made recently—so you see, Joe, it is time to be looking out for a new profession!”
“H’m. I’ll stick to the old brigade, at all events till the new company beats us from the field. Perhaps when that happens they’ll enrol some of us to work the—what d’ye call ’em?—soda-water engines. They’ll have engines of course, I suppose?”
“Of course,” replied the Bloater; “moreover, they mean to turn their prepared water to good account when there are no fires to put out. It is said that the proportions of the mixture can be so varied that, with one kind, the pump may be used for the clarification of beer, oils, treacle, quicksilver, and such like, and for the preservation of fruit, meat, milk, etcetera, and with another mixture they propose to ventilate mines and tunnels; water gardens; kill insects on trees and flowers; soften water for domestic uses, and breweries, and manufacture soda-water, seltzer water, and other aerated beverages—”
“Oh, I say, Bob, hold on,” cried Joe; “you seem to forget that my capacity for swallowing is limited.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll get it enlarged enough before long, to swallow all that and a deal more,” said the Bloater, with a half serious air. “Meanwhile I’ll continue to wish all success and prosperity to the Red Brigade—though you do cause a tremendous amount of damage by your floods of water, as we poor insurance companies know. Why, if it were not for the heroes of the salvage corps we should be ruined altogether. It’s my opinion, Joe, that the men of the salvage corps run quite as much risk as your fellows do in going through fire and smoke and working among falling beams and tumbling walls in order to cover goods with their tarpaulins and protect them from water.”
“I admit that the salvage men do their work like heroes,” said Joe; “but if you would read our chief’s report for last year, you would see that we do our best to put out fires with the smallest possible amount of water. Why, we only used about eleven million gallons in the last twelve months—a most insignificant quantity that, for the amount of work done!”
A tinkle of the telegraph bell here cut short the conversation. “Fire, in the Mall, Kensington,” was the signal.
“Get her out, lads!” cried Joe, referring to the engine.
Helmets and hatchets were donned and buckled on in the old style, and quiet jokes or humorous and free-and-easy remarks were uttered in slow, even sleepy tones, while the men acted with a degree of prompt celerity that could not have been excelled had their own lives depended on their speed. In three minutes, as usual, they were off at full gallop. The Bloater—who still longed to follow them as of old, but had other business on hand—wished them “good luck,” and proceeded at a smart pace to his new lodgings.
We must change the scene now, for the men of the Red Brigade do not confine their attentions exclusively to such matters as drilling, fighting, suffering, conquering, and dying. They sometimes marry! Let us look in at this little church where, as a passer-by remarks, “something appears to be going on.”
A tall handsome young man leads to the altar a delicate, beautiful, blooming bride, whose bent head and blushing cheek, and modest mien and dependent air, contrast pleasantly with the gladsome firm countenance, stalwart frame, and self-reliant aspect of the bridegroom.
Looking at them as they stood then, no one could have entertained for a moment the idea that these two had ever united in the desperate and strenuous attempt to put out a fire! Yet so it was. They had, once upon a time, devoted themselves to the extinction of a fire in a cupboard with such enthusiasm that they had been successful not only in putting that fire out, but in lighting another fire, which nothing short of union for life could extinguish!
Joe Dashwood gave away the bride, and he could not help remarking in a whisper to the Bloater, (who was also there in sumptuous attire), that if ever a man was the born image of his father that man was Fred Crashington—an opinion which was heartily responded to by Mrs Maggie Crashington, who, then in the period of life which is described as “fat, fair, and forty,” looked on at the proceedings with intense satisfaction. Mary Dashwood—also fat, fair, and forty—was there too, and if ever a woman congratulated herself on a rosebud having grown into a full blown blush-rose, that woman was Mary.
Besides a pretty large company of well-dressed people, with white favours in their breasts, there was a sprinkling of active men with sailor-like caps, who hung about the outskirts of the crowd, and among these were two or three stout fellows with brass helmets and dirty hands and faces, and wet garments, who had returned from a recent fire just in time to take a look at their comrade and his fair bride.
“Poor Ned, how his kind heart would have rejoiced to see this day!” murmured Joe, brushing his cheek hastily as he retired from the altar.
So, the wedding party left the church, and the firemen returned to their posts of watchfulness and duty.
About the same period that this wedding took place, there was another wedding in the great metropolis to which we would draw the reader’s attention. Not that it was a great one or a splendid one; on the contrary, if it was marked by any unusual peculiarities, these were shabbiness and poverty. The wedding party consisted of only two, besides the bride and bridegroom, and everything was conducted with such quietness, and gravity, and absence of excitement, that it might almost have been mistaken for a funeral on a small scale by any one unacquainted with the ceremonial appertaining thereto.
The happy pair, besides looking very sad, were past the meridian of life. Both were plainly dressed, and each appeared desirous of avoiding observation. The man, in particular, hung his head and moved awkwardly, as if begging forgiveness generally for presuming to appear in the character of a bridegroom. His countenance had evidently never been handsome, but there was a sad subdued look about it—the result, perhaps, of prolonged suffering—which prevented it from being repulsive. He looked somewhat like an invalid, yet his powerful frame and the action of his strong muscular hands were not in keeping with that idea.
The bride, although careworn and middle-aged, possessed a singularly sweet and attractive countenance—all the more attractive that it wore a habitual expression of sadness. It was a sympathetic face, too, because it was the index to a loving, sympathetic, Christian soul, and its ever-varying indications of feeling, lightened and subdued and modified, but never quite removed, the sadness.
The two who composed the remainder of this wedding party were young men, apparently in a higher position of life than the principals. The one was tall and strapping, the other rather small, but remarkably active and handsome. It was evident that they were deeply interested in the ceremony in which they took part, and the smaller of the two appeared to enjoy some humorous reminiscences occasionally, to judge from the expression of his face when his glance chanced to meet that of his tall friend.
As they were leaving the altar, the bridegroom bent down and murmured in a deep soft voice—
“It’s like a dream, Martha. It ain’t easy to believe that such good luck should come to the likes o’ me.”
The bride whispered something in reply, which was inaudible to those who followed.
“Yes, Martha, yes,” returned the bridegroom; “no doubt it is as you put it. But after all, there’s only one of His sayin’s that has gone right home to me. I’ve got it by heart now—‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ ’Twould have bin all up with me long ago but for that, Martha.”
They reached the door at this point, got into a cab, and drove away. The remainder of the wedding party left the little church on foot.
The same evening on which this event took place, the strapping young man and the little active youth sat together at the open window of a comfortable though small parlour, enjoying a cup of tea. The view from the window was limited, but it possessed the charm of variety; commanding as it did, a vista of chimney-pots of every shape and form conceivable—many of which were capped with those multiform and hideous contrivances with which foolish man vainly endeavours to cure smoke.
“Well, Jim,” asked the strapping youth, as he gazed pensively on this prospect, “what d’you think of it?”
“What do you refer to, Bob—our view or the wedding?”
“The wedding, of course.”
“It’s hard to say,” replied Jim, musing. “He seemed to be such an unmitigated scoundrel when we first made his acquaintance that it is difficult to believe he is a changed man now.”
“By which you mean to insinuate, Jim, that the Gospel is not sufficient for out-and-out blackguards; that it is only powerful enough to deal with such modified scoundrels as you and I were.”
“By no means,” replied Jim, with a peculiar smile; “but, d’you know, Bloater, I never can feel that we were such desperate villains as you make us out to have been, when we swept the streets together.”
“Just listen to him!” exclaimed the Bloater, smiting his knee with his fist, “you can’t feel!—what have feelings to do with knowledge? Don’t you know that we were fairly and almost hopelessly in the current, and that we should probably have been swept off the face of the earth by this time if it had not been for that old gentleman with the bald head and the kindly—”
“There, now, Bloater, don’t let us have any more of that, you become positively rabid when you get upon that old gentleman, and you are conceited enough, also, to suppose that all the gratitude in the world has been shovelled into your own bosom. Come, let us return to the point, what do I think of the wedding—well, I think a good deal of it. There is risk, no doubt, but there is that in everything sublunary. I think, moreover, that the marriage is founded on true love. He never would have come to his present condition but for true love to Martha, which, in God’s providence, seems to have been made the means of opening his mind to Martha’s message, the pith of which message was contained in his last remark on leaving the church. Then, as to Martha, our own knowledge of her would be sufficient to ease our minds as to her wisdom, even if it were not coupled with the reply she made to me when I expressed wonder that she should desire to marry such a man. ‘Many waters,’ she said, ‘cannot quench love!’”
“Ha! you know something of that yourself,” remarked Bob with a smile.
“Something,” replied Little Jim, with a sigh.
“Well, don’t despond,” said the Bloater, laying his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I have reason to know that the obstacles in your way shall soon be removed, because that dear old gentleman with the—”
He was cut short by a loud, gruff shouting in the street below, accompanied by the rattling of wheels and the clatter of horses’ hoofs.
“Ah, there they go!” cried Jim, his eyes glistening with enthusiasm as he and his friend leaned out of the window, and strove to gain a glimpse of the street between the forest of chimneys, “driving along, hammer and tongs, neck or nothing, always at it night and day. A blessing on them!”
“Amen,” said the Bloater, as he and Jim resumed their seats and listened to the sound of the wheels, voices, and hoofs dying away in the distance.
Reader, we re-echo the sentiment, and close our tale with the remark that there are many rescued men and women in London who shall have cause, as long as life shall last, to pray for a blessing on the overwrought heroes who fill the ranks, and fight the battles of the Red Brigade.
