TO see a man, and an Irishman at that, with a neck as thick as a telegraph pole, a cheat on him big enough to pump breath for three people, arms and fists for heavy fighting and a face so square and flat that the first sight of it made you laugh; to see a guy of that sort broken-hearted by a little shrimp of a girl is a sickening spectacle, say I.

       "Casey," I begged of him one morning as he polished the hoofs of Sultan, the big white pole horse of the team, "why don't you get back in the running? This engine-house is getting more like a morgue every day. There's nothing doing at all; no discussions; no squabbles; no fights and no friendly exchange of profanity of an evening."

       He didn't even lift his head, paying less notice to me than if I was the dog instead of the captain of his fire company. He just crouched over a little farther and rubbed away on the hoof.

       "Did you hear me, Casey?" I asked.

       "Yes, yes," says he, as if I was boring him to death.

       Then I told him what I had in mind to say, he, all the while, crawling under and around that big white mountain of a brute and paying no attention to my words. I told him that up to six months before there wasn't an engine-driver in the department who could take as big a steamer as ours at as fast a clip through the streets of New York as he could; that there was no captain as proud of his driver as I was, and there never was a happier company of men than I had. I told him that even Bum, the mascot, led such a comfortable existence that he yelped for joy in his sleep. The sunshine of a fine autumn day streamed through the open door as I held forth to Casey.

       "But what have we here now, Casey?" I asked. "Glooms — nothing but glooms, and I'm so depressed myself that a parade of cripples or a funeral or downright carnage are merry things to think about. And what has caused this change, Casey?" I waited for his answer.

       "Aw, please step to hell," was the reply he slipped me, his captain.

       I turned away with disgust just as Sister Patricia bent under the chain at the door, followed by a snub-nosed orphan which she always took along with her for purposes of decoy.

       I had just been complaining about the number of glooms in my engine-house, but the appearance of Sister Pat and the decoy brat finished packing every inch of space, from the feed-bins in the basement to the rafters, with the miserable creatures. The orphan was the worst specimen of its tribe ever cared for by the Sisters of Charity. Its nose seemed to have been screwed on its face like an upturned faucet left pointing in the wrong direction by some intoxicated plumber. It also had weak eyes and short hair and it slobbered as it sucked one of its fingers. I wondered whether one squint at the brat was worth the quarter I gave Sister Pat. Now, in case you might think I'm intending any disrespect, let me tell you that I knew the little Sister from the day she was born, and that as Patricia Reilly she grew up with my own little Mamie. All the Reilly kids called me Uncle Tim.

       "And how are you to-day, Uncle Tim?" she asked in that sweet, low voice of hers, which was like music at vespers.

       "Horrible," said I.

       As she looked up to me, her little face, framed by the big black bonnet and veil, was like a lily, and her eyes were blue like two forget-me-nots.

       "Any trouble or sickness at home?" she asked as the decoy got closer to her and made a snuffling sound.

       "All the trouble is right here in this engine-house," I told her point-blank. "If you'd only married that big Harp on his knees over there, shining up the hoofs of the brute, instead of —" I didn't get any further, for Sister Pat's blue eyes became wet and her face was more like a rose than a lily.

       "I'll never forgive you," she choked out, and then out she bobbed to the street with the decoy tangoing after her. She left me feeling pretty mean and a little bit sick, just as if some big truckman had walloped me in the bread basket. I went upstairs and got busy with my monthly report to the battalion chief. I was sweating over this, with only a small dictionary to help me, when in comes Casey, clouding the doorway like a curtain of blue covered muscle.

       "I would like a word with you, Captain," says he.

       "You may have about six," says I. "I'm in a hurry. You asked me to step to the lower regions just now and I suppose I must be after doing it."

       "I want to ask you to get me transferred to another company, sir," he said, not bothering about my remarks.

       "You'll stay right here," I told him. "Where'll I get another driver to handle them three horses? Ben and Bessie are man-eaters and Sultan ain't anything but the devil himself. Everybody but you and Bum are scared of them animals." I was getting madder every minute. "This is a hell of a shop, anyhow," I went on. "Here's the driver telling his captain to go to the sub-cellar of Purgatory; a little bit of a Sister of Charity calling me down, although I loved her all her life as if she were my own daughter; the Infernal pole horse always trying to bite off one of my arms and all of my men working without putting any heart in the job. Where do I come in, Casey! Where do I get off? Just answer me that as man to man. Do I come in anywhere or do I get off with anything that is mine by rights and the rules of the department?"

       I jumped out of my chair and stuck my finger under his nose.

       "I'm getting sick of it, Casey, damned sick of it," I shouted, and if he had opened his trap we'd have been still fighting. "This ain't any sanitarium for a lovesick mutt. This is a fire-fighting shop and it's in the heart of the sweat-shop belt, as you well know. All around us the buildings are going higher and higher every day, and the higher they go the more men and women and children are packed in them to make paper flowers, feathers, flimsy underwear and other things worse than gunpowder to a fireman. We ain't had a catastrophe since the Triangle Shirt Waist Company's fire, when hundreds of girls jumped to death or were burned to ashes. You saw that thing happen, didn't you? You did. You'll see it happen again. Do you notice how white my hair is? Well, it isn't because my people grow gray early in life."

       "I just wanted to ask you for a little favor, Captain," he said, and I knew that my words had hurt him.

       "I want to ask you a favor, too," I butted in. "Just stay with the company until we get motorized; that's all. I know you're a one-girl man and I'm sorry for you, Casey."

       "I am that."

       "Everybody in my family tried to persuade that Reilly girl to change her mind about taking the veil, for we all knew you would make a good husband for her," I told him; "but if the girl you love is ready to sacrifice everything in life for her God and God's poor, you ought to be able to stand up some in the battle."

       I could see a big lump rise in his throat. "Thank you, Captain," he managed to say. "It's a bargain. I'll stick until the horses and the old dog go."

       He leaned over and patted Bum on the head, for the brute was at his heels all the time, day and night. Then the two of them left the room.

       It was a tragic thought that came to me as I sat at my desk alone. It was bad enough for Casey as it was, but what of the time when he wouldn't even have the dog that loved the ground he walked on, and the three great brutes, who would strain their muscles until they popped if he urged them to the limit? At the one-alarm or two-alarm fires Casey seldom left the street to go to the fighting line because of the viciousness of the three horses. Nobody but Casey could handle them with any degree of safety, and it wasn't until we tackled a tire big enough to warrant a third alarm that he joined his company with axe or nozzle. That was how he got his nickname, "Three-Alarm." It is easy enough to suggest muzzling the three brutes and Casey always did muzzle them as soon as we drew up to a hydrant; but Sultan would knock a man head over heels with his jaw, while on one side Bessie would fan out with a right hind leg and Ben with his left in the hope of committing murder. Whenever one of them did land and a howl of pain and rage went up in the air, the three white demons would rub noses together in a highly pleased manner. If they couldn't land a blow on a human being, they would get to fighting among themselves, and so Casey had to stand by to watch them until he was absolutely needed.

       The Reillys and my family — the O'Hagans, of County Antrim — were all born down in the American Ward which covers the lower end of Greenwich Village. We were neighbors with the Caseys and so we all grew up together. Patricia was the beauty of the ward and when Mike Casey grew up to be a fine, steady, sober fellow, and joined the department, my old woman decided that he and Patricia would run well in harness. But from the day of her first communion Patricia gave all of her thoughts to Holy Mother, the Church, and finally became a Sister of Charity. After three years' service among the poor she was to take the final vows on the coming Feast of the Annunciation, surrendering her whole life to the service of God.

       Snug in my little flat with my wife and children one nasty winter's night following the agreement struck between Three-Alarm and myself, I asked the old woman if there was any prospect of Sister Pat not taking the final vows and returning to the worldly life.

       "Only a miracle can save Casey's chance," she replied.

       "I've seen 'em happen in my business," I told her. "A building in Elizabeth Street caved in on us one night and every man was dug out without a broken limb."

       But Sister Pat went right ahead with her work among the poor, and especially among the factory girls, where she was a great favorite. If one of them was sick and hard up it was Sister Pat who got her well and managed to raise enough funds to keep her from being put in the street. If a girl was in danger of falling into the hands of the well-dressed young vultures you can see hanging around any factory at five o'clock in the afternoon, Sister Pat would reach her first and save her. She was as holy as she was beautiful.

       That winter was a vicious one, but with only two fires in our battalion district which gave us any worry. Casey worked in both of them, leaving his muzzled friends to the care of the engineer and a cop. On these two occasions Bum, as good a smoke-eater as any Dalmatian that ever served as a mascot, followed him into the burning buildings and violated the unwritten rule that fire dogs must be kept on the floor below the fighting line if they are allowed in the building at all. The rule was made to guard against any of the men tripping over the dogs in the dark. After the second big blaze I told Casey he would have to make Bum stick to the rules of the game, and so he flogged the brute. I saw him punish him and I saw Bum shrink under the first blow of the strap and coil up at his master's feet, looking up to him as if wondering why he had lived to see the day when the hand of the man he loved better than life should be laid heavily upon him. There was more undying faith, love and devotion in the look of that dog's eyes than I ever saw in the eyes of a human. Casey lifted the strap to strike Bum the last blow, but his arm seemed suddenly paralyzed. The leather dropped from his hand and he sat down on the floor, picked up the dog and soothed and comforted him. Old Bum laid his muzzle on his shoulder, snuggled there contentedly. Sultan became restless and was trying to kick down the house. Casey went to him and patted him for a moment, and that scourge of a fire horse nibbled his chin as gently as a girl would nibble a bit of candy. Having been in the department since, I was twenty-one, I had some right to feel that I knew something about the men and other animals which congregate in engine-houses, and I told myself then that an engine driver who could make a brute like Sultan love him, and who could love a dog as he loved Bum, must have something strong and noble in his character. Casey had it.

       We had three runs on the Thursday night before the Feast of the Annunciation, one of them being a cellar fire which gave us a stretch of hard work. After roll call the following morning, every man beat it for the hay, Bum coiling up on the foot of Casey's bed, as usual. We were having a terrible stretch of weather and because of loss of time, by reason of ice and snow, my men always tried to break a record for getting under way when an alarm came in. Beside the bed of each man were his pants and boots, fitted together and open, ready for him to jump in, and his big life belt. Two seconds for getting into boots and trousers, less than a second to snap on the life belt, a second to the brass pole and then three seconds for the whole kit and crew of us to reach the street made our record. Hats and coats were kept on the apparatus.

       We got a good rest that day while a big snowstorm raged. The clouds were so heavy and hung so low that the lights were turned on in the buildings downtown early in the afternoon. With the snow came a wind which increased in velocity every hour until signs were torn from their fastenings and many windows smashed.

       I was in my room and Three-Alarm had just entered to hand me a report on the amount of feed on hand, when our call rang in. He wheeled and jumped for the brass pole, me behind him. The other men dropped after us like big blobs of blue rain from a broken leader.

       The collars of the horses were already snapped and Casey jumped into his seat and turned his head to get the word "Go" from me as I jumped to my place on the ash-pan. Sultan nicked each of the man-eaters, to stir them up, and Bum jumped out into the snow, yelling his head off to warn people out of our way. Out we went in a cloud of smoke and snow, headed for Broadway. Our big whistle and the yelps of Bum got the cop at the crossing on the job and we cleared the traffic safely. Casey let the horses stretch themselves as we swung into Bleecker Street. It was heavy going, but Three-Alarm's demons worked as only they could work, and every now and then I could hear him say something to Sultan just as easily as if he was talking to a child.

       In front of the Bachman Building, a new and lofty structure, we saw a crowd assembled, and we knew where our work was waiting for us. The building was fifteen stories high and the fire was on the twelfth floor. One of the elevators was still running and we packed into it and reached the eleventh floor. As we left the car I stumbled over something soft. It was the body of a woman. I bundled it into the car and told the man running it to hustle for the fresh air below.

       It was black as pitch, but we found the hose and standpipes and got them going for the twelfth floor. I found it impossible to make the fire line without oxygen helmets. The best we could do was to play the streams from the landing at the turn of the stairs between the eleventh and twelfth floors. We accomplished nothing this way and so I left the foreman in charge and beat it down eleven flights for the street. I was spinning like a top when I reached my engine and looked for Casey. The engineer pointed to a tall building on the opposite side of the street and west of the Bachman Building.

       "They're going to fight it from that roof," he said. "It's a flower factory going, and it is going faster than hell. The third alarm's just gone in."

       He didn't have to tell me that. What with the gas-jets for each worker, the pots of glue, the flimsy material and thousands of cardboard boxes to hold the spring samples, to say nothing of the chemicals used in dyeing petals, leaves and stems, I knew we were in for a hard tussle.

       "Did they all get out?" I asked.

       "The five o'clock whistle had just blown and the superintendent of the building thinks every one reached the sidewalk."

       My battalion chief shouted to me to get up to the roof across the street, to which men were already hauling hose with block and fall.

       I found Casey on the job with men of two other companies.

       "I don't know whether she got out," he whispered, bending his head close to mine in the whirling snow.

       "Who got out?" I asked.

       "Sister Pat."

       "Good God!"

       "One of the girls on the street said that a Sister of Charity had called for one of the workers who was in trouble, and that she had quelled a panic by lifting up her cross and telling them to file out by stairs and fire-escapes."

       "How about the fire-escapes now?"

       "Shriveled up. It's a hot fire."

       A fire in a flower factory, once it gets going good, will shrivel iron like macaroni, wilt fire doors like paper and make glass windows pop like firecrackers. Then the wind comes in and hell is loose.

       The gale must have been blowing sixty miles an hour. The first two streams we tried to shoot across the street were turned to mist. We got five streams going, but the wind did not veer any and all that we could do was to wait and pray for it to shift a little. The chief came up to look things over and said that there was no way for the fire to eat downward, but that it looked as if the three top floors were as good as gone. He said that he understood that everybody was out of the building. That made me feel a little easier and I turned to tell Casey the good news. I saw him kneeling close to the cornice, his eyes fastened on the roof of the burning building. Something bright shone on the tin roof beside him and I took a second look. It was the little brass stock of the rope gun, and beside it was the round copper pan in which stout twine is coiled carefully and held in readiness for the last effort a fireman can make to save anyone trapped beyond the reach of the ladders.

       I shouted to Three-Alarm what the chief had said and he turned for barely a second and nodded that he had heard me.

       "Have you seen Bum?" he yelled above the howl of the storm.

       I hadn't even thought of the faithful brute up to that minute. I remembered seeing him in the entrance to the building across, smelling around as if he had struck a familiar scent, but that was all. He certainly was not in the elevator car which carried my men to the eleventh floor.

       "I ain't seen him," I yelled back, "but he knows how to take care of himself." The words were hardly out of my mouth when Casey jumped to his feet with a yell. He leveled a finger across the chasm, and there at the edge of the roof of the Bachman Building stood Bum. He began to yelp and run about, looking for a way of escape by means of an adjoining roof, but there wasn't any adjoining roof, the Bachman Building rising straight up in the air above two old-fashioned houses, more like a monument than anything else.

       The fire ate into the thirteenth floor, making two great belts of flame now, and it was a dead sure thing that the whole top of the structure was doomed. Our hose was powerless, for the wind had not veered or let up in its velocity and it was so cold that the drip of the hose froze our boot-soles to the roof on which we were gathered.

       When the fire burst through the thirteenth story windows, a rosy glow was thrown high in the air and we could see things more distinctly on the roof across the street. We saw old Bum run to the scuttle covering and bark wildly and then run away from it, and then I saw appear above the roof a patch of white. It was the face of a human being and I groaned deep down in my heart. It came higher and higher until there stepped to the roof above that seething hell a Sister of Charity. The gale grabbed at her big black bonnet and tore at her veil and gown.

It was Bum who had led her to the roof through smoke and fire and darkness

 

       "Holy Mother in Heaven!" My appeal was echoed by every man about me. It was little Sister Pat who had been cut off, and as sure as I'm sitting here it was Bum who had led her to the roof through smoke and fire and darkness. I turned to look for Casey. He was on one knee at the edge of the roof, the rope gun to his shoulder. I heard the sharp click of the hammer.

       "Are you all set?" he asked the man holding the twine pan, just as cool as if he was asking for a chew of tobacco.

       "Yes."

       Blowie!

       The iron top on the muzzle of the gun shot in the air and it carried its lengthening tail of twine through the snow and across the roof of the Bachman Building, falling at the feet of Sister Pat, who was standing with her crucifix clasped before her, while Bum scurried about her heels.

       The recoil threw Casey back from the cornice. As he scrambled to his feet the flames burst from the windows or the fourteenth floor with a great shattering and popping of glass, the sound of which rose above the howling of the storm and the crackling of the flames. It seemed only a few seconds when the big bonfire of pretty paper and silk flowers, waiting in their boxes for the spring delivery, had made such a heat that the fifteenth and top floor was set off by spontaneous combustion. It was only a question of minutes when the roof would melt and drop.

       A stout rope was already made fast to the twine and the chief was raising his trumpet to megaphone Sister Pat to haul in on the twine when Casey grubbed the horn and lifted it to his lips.

       "Patricia Reilly!" he shouted, and you could have heard it a mile, storm or no storm. "Listen to me — Casey!" She turned in our direction and saw us, while Bum, recognizing that voice, ran to the edge of the roof and stood there in the bright glow from beneath, wagging his tail with delight and barking his head off.

       "Pull in on the cord," shouted Three-Alarm. "There's a rope coming with it. Make the rope fast to anything strong you can find. I'm coming for you!"

       Sister Pat dropped the crucifix and did as she was told. The wind kept tearing at her flowing black garments and Casey yelled to throw off her bonnet, veil and outer skirt. She obeyed him and then knotted her end of the rope a round an iron ventilator pipe. We pulled in the slack and tried the knot and found it good. As Casey threw off his storm coat and snaked over the edge of the roof, Sister Pat stood with the dog watching him. I could see that the great muss of brown hair she had worn as a girl had been cropped close. Still clinging to the crucifix, and her white stockings showing beneath a short, brown flannel petticoat, she looked like an altar boy serving at vespers.

       Without a word from any of us Casey slipped the big snuffle or his life belt over the rope and slid out as fast as gravity would take him to a point over the center of the street. fifteen stories below. Then he had to make the rest of the way hand over hand, and I could see his big muscles slipping under the skin as he worked his way to the rescue of the woman he loved. Casey made the cornice opposite, climbed over, disengaged the snaffle and slapped his hands against his hips to cool off the palms.

       The flames began to come out of the scuttle and we could see everything as plain as day on the roof across the street. Bum was jumping up and trying to kiss his master, whose first act was to run to the ventilator pipe and try it to test its strength. He seemed satisfied that it would hold and turned and ran to Sister Pat, taking her by a hand where the rope crossed the cornice. Once again the snaffle was engaged and Casey's body slid over the roof's edge. Sister Pat lowered herself in his arms and in a trice the two of them were shooting toward us. When they reached the bottom of the slack Casey made her cling to his neck and began the hand over hand struggle once more, only with added weight. Bitter cold as it was, the sweat splashed from him, but never once did he stop to rest until he reached our cornice. Sister Pat was lifted over quickly and Casey after her.

       If ever a captain was proud of a lire-lighter I was at that moment as the chief stepped up to him to say something in his praise. But the chief never got to say it. Casey rubbed his head with his blistered hands and turned away, going back to the rope. In the excitement of saving a life across such a chasm, all of us but Casey had forgotten the dog. Over the cornice he went once more and the same light was made, this time not for a woman, but for a dumb friend, tried, loving and true. It was a terrible struggle for Casey after what he had just passed through, but he got to the other side. The hood of the scuttle had been burned off by now and from the hole was shooting a great pillar of fire. I saw Casey pick up the twine and lash Bum to his breast with it. It was perilous business getting over the cornice with the dog hampering his arms, but the good brute clung to his shoulders with his paws and seemed to know that he was safe.

       On the second uphill climb to our side progress was slow and the sweat froze on Three-Alarm's face and neck and arms. Occasionally I looked from my driver and his dog to the ventilator pipe, knowing that the fire was eating at its roots under the roof. It showed a slight angle to it and I began to pray that it would hold just three minutes more. Casey must have felt the give to the rope, for he began one final spurt with strength that only a desperate man could show. Two of the strongest men we had were ready with outstretched arms over the cornice, other men holding to their legs. They nabbed him just as the iron pipe tore loose and as the roof of the Bachman Building dropped.

       Casey fell flat on his back from exhaustion and as we cut the twine lashings Bum whined and licked his chin. But man and dog were all right in a few minutes.

       "Where's she, Captain? " asked Three-Alarm, when he got his wind.

       "She's on her way to my flat in an ambulance," I told him. "I didn't know whether you'd get back with Bum, and so hustled her out of sight."

       A fit of dizziness struck him and he squatted on the roof.

       "What's to-day?" he asked feebly, when I leaned over him.

       "Don't worry, Casey," I said, for I knew what he was thinking of. "This is Friday night and the Feast of the Annunciation ain't until Sunday. There's plenty of time, plenty of time."

       I managed to run around to the flat for breakfast and my old woman was waiting for me, her eyes bright as two brand new stars just born in the heavens.

       "Well," I asked, "is she going to take the final vows?"

       "She is," replied Mrs. O'Hagan, "but they'll be the final and lasting vows of the holy bonds of matrimony, I'm thinking."

(THE END)