Life in the Red Brigade: London Fire Brigade. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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.