"Fire!" shouted the sailor, running forward. But Dick Davis had already sprung to the alarm bells.
CHAPTER XVI THE FIRE DRILL IN EARNEST
The sailor's cry of "Fire," the most dreaded that can rise at sea, disturbed Captain Tom Halstead's sound rest. He half awoke.
Then it sounded again:
"Fire!"
In prompt confirmation of the cry, the electric bell began ringing in his room. Directly over it glowed an electric light in a red bulb—the fire signal to the cabin.
Tom Halstead fairly leaped from his bed. He got on all the clothing needed with the speed of a fireman.
Dick Davis's hand had come, first, to the bell rousing the watch below. He rang that first, but Halstead's bell immediately afterward.
As Halstead burst open the door of his cabin the red glow was in his face.