“Never mind that,” Sandy said grimly. “I’d put you in the captain’s quarters, if I thought it would be safer. I’m not taking any chances on your getting trapped by the fire, Cookie.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll soon find out! Now, you just stay put while I go back and help fight the fire.”
Without another word, Sandy turned and raced back down the passageway.
A wild scene greeted Sandy’s eyes.
Thick, greasy clouds of smoke—from the roasts and the other cuts of meat that had caught fire—rolled from the galley. Through the smoke, he could see the red and yellow of the flames. Sometimes a sheet of fire would lance out through the smoke, and there would be a hissing and a crackling that would warn the smoke-grimed and panting fire fighters that another big can of lard had exploded and caught fire and was now making their task even harder.
All along the passageway lay thick lines of hose. They were crisscrossed and intertwined, and, sometimes, when they leaped under the pressure of the water coursing through them, they gave the passageway the look of a snake pit.
Crewmen wearing fire helmets dashed up and down, helter-skelter, some of them with fire extinguishers in their hands, others carrying fire axes. A bucket brigade had been formed among the spare crewmen, and Sandy saw the buckets passing from hand to hand with the precision of an assembly line in a factory. The empty buckets would be passed up the ladder to be refilled by a man who fastened them to a rope and then lowered them into the lake.
From what Sandy could see, most of the fire seemed to be centered in the middle of the galley, next to the stove. Luckily, Cookie had wisely insisted that his old grease-soaked wooden cabinets be replaced by nonflammable metal ones, otherwise the fire would have been uncontrollable. As it was, it was bad enough. Flames shot higher and higher from the meat-chopping table. Here, the thick slab of wood had become thoroughly soaked by the overturned grease. Beneath the terrible roaring sound it gave off as it burned, Sandy could hear the hissing and snapping of the grease.
Above all the sound and fury of the fire itself, and the excited babble of the men as they rushed here and there to prevent the flames from spreading to the mess hall, Sandy could hear the booming of Captain West’s voice.