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“Here’s your trumpet, Mr. Crow,” screeched a small boy, bursting through the crowd.

Half of the inhabitants of Tinkletown stood outside of the rim of heat and watched the fire, while the other half, in all stages of deshabille, remained in their front yards training the garden hose on the roofs and sides of their houses and yelling to every speeding passer-by to telephone to the commissioner of water-works to turn on more pressure. Among his other offices, Mr. Crow was commissioner of water-works, having held over in that office because the board of selectmen forgot to appoint any one else in his place after the last election. And while a great many citizens carried the complaint of the garden-hose handlers to the commissioner, it is doubtful if he heard them above the combined sound of his own voice and the roar of the flames.

Possessed of his trumpet, the redoubtable Mr. Crow took his stand beside the old hand-pumping “fire-engine” and gave orders right and left in a valiant but thoroughly cracked voice.

“Now, we’ll git her out,” panted Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, speaking to Father Maloney, the Catholic priest, who was taking a turn with him at the pumping apparatus. “Ed.’s all right, but it takes Anderson to handle a fire as she ought to be handled.”

Father Maloney, perspiring copiously and breathing with great difficulty, grunted without conviction.

“Leetle more elbow-grease there, men!” shouted Anderson, directing his command to the futile pumpers. “We got to get water up to that second-story winder. More steam, boys–more steam!”

“Aw, what’s the use?” growled Bill Jackson, letting go of the pump to wipe his dripping forehead. “We couldn’t put her out with Niagary Falls in flood-time.”

“Bring your hose over here, men–lively, now!” called out the leader. “Every second counts. Lively! Git out o’ the way, Purt Throcker! Consarn you fool boys! Can’t you keep back where you belong? Right over here, men! That’s the ticket! Now, shoot her into that winder. Hey! One of you boys bust in that winder glass with a rock. All of you! See if you c’n hit her!”

A fusillade of stones left the hands of a score of small boys and clattered against the walls of the doomed warehouse, some of them coming as near as ten feet to the objective, two of them being so wide of the mark that simultaneous ejaculations of surprise and pain issued from the lips of Miss Spratt and Professor Smith, both of the high school.

The heat was intense, blistering. Reluctantly the crowd, awed and fascinated by the greatest blaze it had ever seen,–not even excepting the burning of Eliphalet Loop’s straw-ricks in 1897,–edged farther and farther away, pursued by the relentless heat-waves. The fire-fighters withdrew in good order, obeying the instinct of self-preservation somewhat in advance of the command of their superior, who, indeed, had anticipated such a man[oe]uvre by taking a position from which he could lead the retreat. By the time the fire was at its height, “lighting the way clear to heaven,” according to Miss Sue Becker, who had to borrow Marshal Crow’s pencil and a piece of paper from Mort Fryback so that she could jot down the beautiful thought before it perished in the “turmoil of frightfulness!”

“More elbow-grease, men!” roared Anderson, “She’ll get ahead of us if we let up for a second! Pump! Pump!”

And pump they did, notwithstanding the fact that the stream of water from the nozzle in the hands of Ed Higgins and Petey Cicotte was now falling short of the building by some twenty or thirty feet.

“Serves old man Smock right!” declared Anderson in wrath, addressing the town clerk and two selectmen who by virtue of office retained advantageous positions in the front rank of spectators “If he’d done as I told him an’ paid fer havin’ water-mains extended as fer out as his warehouse, we could have saved it fer him. It looks to me now as if she’s bound to go. Where’s Harry?”