When the stunning shock to his nerves was exhausting itself, King Stanislaus in a dazed way began to think, with the full realization that whatever there was to be done had to be accomplished quickly.
Suddenly he recalled the frame building they had passed in going to the palace. If it housed as he most fervently hoped it did a complete equipment for fighting fires it might prove the very means by which the Brownies could grapple with a situation that was becoming more and more intolerable.
Promptly he communicated his plan to various members of the band, as he spied them, and the word was passed around from one to the other, until all were fully conversant with His Majesty’s views. And very soon all these agile sprites, with King Stanislaus and Prince Florimel in the lead, were racing helter-skelter back to the wooden structure that bore the inscription: NEPTUNE HOOK AND LADDER CO. NO. 1.
They broke in the doors, and soon were prying into every nook and corner of the place. And, while King Stanislaus forthwith seized a fire-trumpet that was hanging from a hook on the wall, Brownies were donning with the greatest haste fire helmets that even with paper stuffed in them came down over their ears, and putting on rubber boots and coats intended by Dragonfel for his followers, and which proved but sorry fits, for the boots came well up over their waists, and had to be turned back, and the coats trailed after them like the long trains of fashionable ladies’ gowns.
The energetic monarch was rather disappointed to find upon inspection that the machine instead of being one of the modern, up-to-date kind was of a very antiquated type, a brake-engine with man-handles that had to be worked by hand to throw a stream of water. But he was greatly relieved to discover that there was an abundant supply of hose, for in providing himself with this the enchanter evidently had made a nice calculation of the distance from the crater of the volcano to the stand-pipe connection in the palace, and he had allowed plenty to spare.
In stentorian tones His Majesty shouted out his orders through the fire-trumpet, and the Brownies hauled out the engine and hose-carriage. Then they all took hold of the long ropes attached to them, and started on a run for Dragonfel’s ruined palace, that now was little more than a tumbled heap.
Brownies perched on the engine, and one kept clanging the bell furiously. Some who ran with the ropes tripped on the trailing tails of their rubber coats, but they never let go, and were dragged along by their surer-footed companions.