"All right," cried Gallagher; "I'll go in and find 'em without any guide. Hold the ladder, boys."
And up he went!
"I'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and without more words these two climbed in through the coal-chute and started down the black, hot, stifling ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got there safely, and found eight men still alive, all Germans, engineers and their assistants. But when the firemen called to them to hurry out for their lives, they refused to move. Their duty was with their engines, said they; they had to run the engines; they were much obliged to the American gentlemen, but they could not leave their post.
Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their ears.
"But you will die!" they urged.
The Germans thought it very likely; still they could not leave.
"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; you will be burned to death."
The Germans understood perfectly: they would be burned to death at their engines; and as they were all of this mind and not to be shaken, the firemen could only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, but at last their good star prevailed, and they came without harm to their comrades, who listened in wonder to the news they brought. It seemed such utter folly, the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, yet there was something almost splendid in their stubborn devotion to duty. Quietly they had looked death in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not flinched; and days later, when the steamer had burned herself out and lay grounded in the mud, cold and black, the wreckers found these faithful though mistaken men still at their posts, still by their engines, where they had waited in spite of everything—where they had perished.
All this time the Van Wyck had been working on the Saale, but in a harder fight, for the flames raged here as fiercely as on the Bremen, while the smaller fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five tons of water a minute, which was not enough.