BILL BROWN'S TEST

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT

All firemen have courage, but it cannot be known
until the test how many have this particular kind,
--Bill Brown's kind.

What happened was this: Engine 29, pumping
and pounding her prettiest, stood at the northwest
corner of Greenwich and Warren streets,
so close to the blazing drug-house that Driver
Marks thought it wasn't safe there for the three
horses, and led them away.  That was fortunate,
but it left Brown alone, right against the cheek
of the fire, watching his boiler, stoking in coal,
keeping his steam-gauge at 75.  As the fire gained,
chunks of red-hot sandstone began to smash down
on the engine.  Brown ran his pressure up to 80,
and watched the door anxiously where the boys
had gone in.

Then the explosion came, and a blue flame,
wide as a house, curled its tongues halfway across
the street, enwrapping engine and man, setting
fire to the elevated railway station overhead, or
such wreck of it as the shock had left.

Bill Brown stood by his engine, with a wall
of fire before him and a sheet of fire above him. 
He heard quick footsteps on the pavements,
and voices, that grew fainter and fainter, crying,
``Run for your lives!''  He heard the hose-wagon
horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging
away, mad with fright and their burns.  He was
alone with the fire, and the skin was hanging in
shreds on his hands, face, and neck.  Only a
fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel
up a man, and the pain over the bared surfaces
was,--well, there is no pain worse than that
of fire scorching in upon the quick flesh seared
by fire.

Here, I think, was a crisis to make a very
brave man quail.  Bill Brown knew perfectly well
why every one was running; there was going to
be another explosion in a couple of minutes,
maybe sooner, out of this hell in front of him. 
And the order had come for every man to save
himself, and every man had done it except the
lads inside.  And the question was, Should he run
or should he stay and die?  It was tolerably certain
that he would die if he stayed.  On the other
hand, the boys of old 29 were in there.  Devanny
and McArthur, and Gillon and Merron, his
friends, his chums.  He'd seen them drag the
hose in through that door,--there it was now,
a long, throbbing snake of it,--and they hadn't
come out.  Perhaps they were dead.  Yes, but
perhaps they weren't.  If they were alive, they
needed water now more than they ever needed
anything before.  And they couldn't get water
if he quit his engine.

Bill Brown pondered this a long time, perhaps
four seconds; then he fell to stoking in coal, and
he screwed her up another notch, and he eased
her running parts with the oiler.  Explosion or
not, pain or not, alone or not, he was going to
stay and make that engine hum.  He had done
the greatest thing a man can do,--had offered
his life for his friends.

It is pleasant to know that this sacrifice was
averted.  A quarter of a minute or so before the
second and terrible explosion, Devanny and his
men came staggering from the building.  Then it
was that Merron fell, and McArthur checked his
fight to save him.  Then it was, but not until
then, that Bill Brown left Engine 29 to her fate
(she was crushed by the falling walls), and ran
for his life with his comrades.  He had waited for
them, he had stood the great test.