Frank started, and looked very grave as he said hurriedly to his brother—
“Good-night, lad. I won’t likely be able to get out to-morrow to talk over this matter of the fortune. Fires are usually bad in that neighbourhood. Look well after mother. Good-night.”
In another moment he was gone.
And well might Frank look grave, for when a fireman is called to a fire in Tooley Street, or any part of the docks, he knows that he is about to enter into the thickest of the Great Fight. To ordinary fires he goes light-heartedly—as a bold trooper gallops to a skirmish, but to a fire in the neighbourhood of the docks he goes with something of the feeling which must fill the breast of every brave soldier on the eve of a great battle.
Chapter Thirty Two.
The Fire in Tooley Street.
One of those great calamities which visit us once or twice, it may be, in a century, descended upon London on Saturday, the 22nd of June, 1861. It was the sudden, and for the time, overwhelming, attack of an old and unconquerable enemy, who found us, as usual, inadequately prepared to meet him.
Fire has fought with us and fed upon us since we became a nation, and yet, despite all our efforts, its flames are at this day more furious than ever. There are more fires daily in London now than there ever were before. Has this foe been properly met? is a question which naturally arises out of this fact. Referring to the beautiful organisation of the present Fire Brigade, the ability of its chiefs and the courage of its men, the answer is, Yes, decidedly. But referring to the strength of the brigade; to the munitions of war in the form of water; to the means of conveyance in the form of mains; to the system of check in the shape of an effective Act in reference to partition-walls and moderately-sized warehouses; to the means of prevention in the shape of prohibitions and regulations in regard to inflammable substances—referring to all these things, the answer to the question, “Has the foe been properly met?” is emphatically, No.