So, now, when all had been done that could be for the Bremen, orders came that the New-Yorker, too, turn her streams against the Saale, and a little later the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the unhappy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing island, and presently grounded by the bow on the Communipaw mud-flats, and rested there for the last agony.
The story of those tragic hours is not for telling now. There were more heroic rescues. There were brave attempts at rescue that availed nothing. The fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roaring about them and water up to their knees surging past like a mill-race; it was the return torrent from their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern settled and the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. In a large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman gave a noble picture of resignation in the face of an awful death. Hemmed in there between fire and water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads for cups of water passed in through the port-hole, and waved "good-by" as the stern gave a final lurch and went down.
FIRE-BOATS WORKING ON THE "BREMEN" AND THE "SAALE."
Nor does this end the record of that day, for there was still the Main to fight for, and at eleven o'clock that night the New-Yorker steamed up the river and caught the third liner as the flood-tide bore her stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She had been blazing for eight hours, and was red-hot now from the water-line up. It seemed incredible that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they went to work in the old way, and within an hour had dragged out through the coal-hole a blackened and frightened company, more than a score of boiler-cleaners and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through those fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest bunkers far below the water-level.
After this the fire-boats did other things.