The Fire.
Will Somers belonged to the “Cataract,” which was not a “steamer,” but a hand-engine. To belong to the “Cataract” it was necessary to own a red flannel shirt, a good pair of lungs, and a nimble pair of legs. The shirt—did that mean fire? The lungs enabled one to do all the “hollering” that might be necessary. The legs were still more essential, that the engine might move with proper speed to a fire, and this was at a neck-breaking pace. As the engine company had many alarms to answer, some of them purposely raised to enable the company to “show off”—so Simes Badger said—the legs of a Cataract-boy were not the least valuable of his fire-apparatus. And then it did seem as if the company all took a fiendish delight in going “like mad” by the homes of old women and all single ladies like Miss Persnips, tossing their red helmets—I omitted this essential piece of property—directing at the windows defiant glances, and all the while their sharp, cracked engine-bell went up and down, over and over, as if it were an insane acrobat.
“Fire! Fire!” screamed a female voice, one afternoon. The screamer was Miss Persnips.
“Where, where?” shouted Simes Badger.
“O, there, there! I know it must be,” was the answer.
That was all Simes wanted, and especially as Mr. Walton was holding a service at St. John’s. If Simes could excite a neighborhood, and also create a sensation in church, he was happy. He now rushed into the church-vestibule, and then into the bell-tower, and seizing the rope pulled it as if the small-pox had broken out and attacked every other person in the community. Simes being the one to make the bell boom, “Danger!” he gave evidence that this one person certainly was not afflicted with the malady.
In just two minutes from the first rap on the bell, Will Somers, leaving behind him a caldron of boiling herbs, was at the door of the engine-house, and unlocking it, had seized the long rope attached to the engine. There were enough who joined him to rush out into the street the clumsy machine. There they received large re-enforcements.
“Where is the fire?” bawled the foreman.
Nobody knew.