Within these walls

by Rupert Hughes

And there promised to be drama enough this night.

The gathering volunteers flung back the folding doors and disclosed the engine, a monster asleep and gleaming as with phosphorescent scales in the light of the brass and silver trimmings polished often and piously. A light was struck with a tinder-box and the signal lantern and torches brightened the room.

The Fire King Engine Company had been proud of its tamed leviathan, though there had been some criticism because on one side of the engine an allegorical figure of Hope had been painted with almost no clothes on her. But New York was advancing artistically with giant strides, and a painting of a semi-nude Adam and Eve had been exhibited that summer without provoking anything more violent than protest. Also, the Greek casts were displayed nowadays without interference, though of course ladies did not visit them at the same time with gentlemen.

But Heaven rebuked the ruthless allegory of Hope before this night was over; and with the ruination of Hope went the beautiful scene on the opposite flank of the engine, a painting of the recent burning of the Roman Catholic Church in Nassau Street. The Fire Kings had played a noble part there, and had almost saved the church.

Now, as they dashed into the street they were thrown into a tangle to avoid the rush of the Naiad Hose Company swooping past with a gaudy carriage, whose front panel presented the burning of Troy and the death of Achilles, while the back panel showed an Indian maid parting from her lover. The hosemen might have been Indians themselves from the wild yell they gave.

There was no time for the usual gay dispute over the right of way, and the cobblestones and brickbats with which the road would have been normally challenged were frozen in the ice. Besides, the Fire Kings were sparse in numbers.

Such Fire Kings as braved the elements would long tell of the catastrophe. Getting to the neighborhood of the blaze was adventure enough of itself. For the road was grooved with the tracks of sleigh runners and chopped up with a confusion of hoof-marks impressed in knife-edged ridges. The men inside the square of the draw-rope alternately slipped, sliddered, fell, rose, stumbled, sprawled, and ran on with wrenched joints and torn pantaloons. Their progress made a sharp music as if they were trampling through a river of crackling glass.

But they ran on because there was tonic in the community of misery.

RoBards was touched by the sight of Chalender’s lean face above the satin stock and the frilled white shirt. The others were in red flannel, and cold enough. Chalender’s great beaver hat was a further trial to keep on, and finally the wind swirled it out of sight and seeking. RoBards bared his own head and offered Chalender his brass-bound helmet of glazed leather, but Chalender declined it with a graceful gesture and a chill smile drawn painfully along the line of his white mouth. The only color in his cheeks was imposed by the ruddy flare of the sky.

The fire, wherever it was, seemed to retreat as the company advanced. It grew in vastitude, too. The scarlet heavens were tormented with yellow writhings, as if Niagara were falling upwards in a mist of smoke and a spume of red spray.