IV

FAMOUS RESCUES BY NEW YORK FIRE-BOATS FROM RED-HOT OCEAN LINERS

AFTER all has been said that may be about our admirable fire-engines,
and endless stories have been told of gallant fights made by the engine
lads for life and property, there remains this fact: that New York
possesses a far more formidable weapon against fires than the plucky
little "steamers" that go clanging and tooting about our streets. The
fire-boat is as much superior to the familiar fire-engine as a
rapid-fire cannon is superior to a rifle. A single fire-boat like the
_New-Yorker_ will throw as much water in a given time as twenty ordinary
fire-engines: it will throw twelve thousand gallons in a minute--that
is, fifty tons; or, if we imagine this great quantity of water changed
into a rope of ice, say an inch thick, it would reach twenty miles.

Suppose we go aboard her now, this admirable _New-Yorker_, and look
about a little. People come a long way to see her, for she's the largest
and finest fire-boat in the world. Pretty, isn't she? All brass and hard
wood and electric lights, everything shining like a pleasure-yacht.
Looks like a gunboat with rows of cannon all around her--queer, stumpy
little cannon, that have wheels above their mouths. Those are hose
connections, like hydrants in a city, where they screw fast the rubber
lines. She has twenty-one on a side; that makes forty-two "gates," as
the engineer calls them, without counting four monitors aloft--those
things on the pilot-house that look like telescopes with long red tails.
It was the monitors, especially "Big Daddy," that did such great work
against those North German Lloyders, in their drift down the river, in
1900, with decks ablaze and red-hot iron hulls. We shall hear all about
that day if we sit us down quietly in the fire quarters ashore and get
the crew started.

Stepping over-side again, here we are in the home of the fire-boat crew.
It's more like a club than an engine-house. No horses stamping about, no
stable; but pictures on the walls, and men playing cribbage or reading,
and nobody in a hurry. Plenty of time for tales of adventure, unless
that gong takes to tapping.

And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder brass column from the
sleeping-rooms. He's the lad who did fine things in that great fire at
the Mallory pier--saved a man's life and made the roll of honor by it.
We'll never get the story from him, but the other boys will tell us.

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