"Clear the Track!" A Story of To-day

by E. Werner

But, as if in reply, loud shouts and voices were now heard, and torches were seen gleaming at the entrance to the works. A troop of workmen appeared in closed ranks, with fire-helmets on their heads and asbestos frocks thrown on, while behind them thundered the engines. And after five minutes came a second troop, and then a third and a fourth. Now the cry of "fire!" was heard on all sides; near and far it resounded, until the whole valley was alive, and lights were shining in all quarters. The works filled with men; all came and all were prepared to help.

In the beginning Dernburg had been almost petrified at the sight of these arrivals; but now, when one procession after the other emerged from the darkness, when the people came as though on a race between life and death--anything so as only to arrive in time--when the engines drove up at a gallop, then the lord of Odensburg heaved a long, deep sigh; he straightened himself up, as though he had cast from him a burden long borne, and shouted:

"Well, men, if you want to help, then, forward! Down with the fire!"

This was done, but the conflagration had already found too abundant aliment. The whole interior of the rolling-mills seemed to be in flames, and in vain they sought to force their way in. Dernburg had undertaken, in person, the superintendence of the attempts to quench the fire, and guided his men by word and look, while they obeyed him as punctually and studiously as ever.

But Oscar von Wildenrod also worked unweariedly to the same end. He did not stop to ask whether they would concede to him this right--he simply took it. He was everywhere as the emergency demanded. But although he courageously and undauntedly led forward single detachments again and again, although the engines incessantly hurled their hissing streams into the fiercest of the flames, yet the fire had an overpoweringly strong ally in the prevailing wind, and, in union with it, defied all their exertions. Like fiery serpents the flames darted out of the house windows, licking the walls and shooting their tongues forth venomously from the roof. The wind was already driving them across to other roofs; it bore burning bits of wood aloft through the air, in order to drop them again where they would kindle and extend the disaster.

Already the fire had broken out in single spots, and wherever this happened, detachments had to be sent for its extinction.

Oscar von Wildenrod had just returned from one of these side-fires, which he had had put out under his own supervision, to the starting point of the conflagration, where Herr Dernburg had planted himself like a rock. Dernburg was just talking with the upper-engineer, who stood before him with the crestfallen look of one at his wits' end.

"We are not subduing it, Herr Dernburg," said he. "Only see, the fire already threatens to catch the foundries, and if they burn, then it will make a clean sweep of the whole. There might be one expedient, perhaps, but you will not consent to it--suppose we made the attempt to turn on the water from the Radefeld aqueduct."

"No, never--that would imperil human life! Maybe volunteers might be found; in their present mood the people are capable of any sacrifice, but no man's life shall be victimized for my sake--rather let the works all burn down."

He stepped up to the engineers that were advancing to a new attack with their water-jets, and there gave a few orders, while Wildenrod, who had been listening, turned to the upper-engineer.