“O dear, what will they do?” lamented Edith. “That hose is the only one in town!” For a few moments it looked as if not only the church but the parsonage and the adjacent buildings were to fall victims to the blazing flames that swept upward and outward with shooting jets between tall columns of black rolling smoke.
“They are going to form a bucket brigade!” shouted Edith suddenly into Nathalie’s ear. The words had barely passed her lips when she dropped her companion’s cold fingers, and was racing with a crowd of men, women, and boys towards a pond a short distance away.
Nathalie stood still and gazed with suppressed excitement at this new development of the fire-crazed people. It seemed to her as if every one in Westport must have owned a bucket from the number of people that sped—as if magic swept—towards the pond, where a long line of human beings, with a deftness and quickness that amazed her, were already passing buckets from one to the other and then on to the firemen who formed a line across the road in front of the church.
Each fireman would grab a bucket, pass it on to his mate, who in turn passed it on to the next one, and so on, until its contents had been splashed on the seething flames. Then just as quickly it was shoved by way of another line back to the pond to be filled again and once more hurried on its journey of rescue.
“Come, get busy!” some one suddenly yelled at this crisis. “They are forming another line at the pump!” Nathalie swung about to see Fred Tyson holding out to her an empty bucket. The unexpectedness of this new demand upon her overwrought nerves tempted her to scurry to parts unknown, as she backed away from Fred with the startled exclamation, “O dear, no!”
Fred, realizing how she felt, looked down at her with a reassuring smile as he answered, “Come, you must help; you are a Pioneer—it will be a fine experience for you!” Nathalie, without a word, grabbed the bucket and in another second was running swiftly by the side of this new friend as he guided her to the pump.
An hour later Nathalie appeared at the corner of the street leading to her home. Weary, bedraggled, sooted from head to foot, and with gleaming beads of perspiration running over her face, she was still jubilant. She had been to a real fire, and, what is more, had helped to put it out. For the buckets had done their work, and although the church stood a framework of glowing embers, the parsonage and other buildings had been saved.
She was so glad when she saw she was nearing her home, that, as she informed Fred, who had accompanied her, she felt like dancing a jig on her head from sheer joy, although she was not only tired to the verge of distraction, but faint from hunger.
“Oh, and there’s Mother! I guess she’s been almost worried to death,” she exclaimed as she spied her mother standing on the veranda anxiously peering down the path.
“Well, I guess she has been almost worried to death!” exclaimed a voice, as a white-robed figure stepped out from the shadows of the trees on the lawn.