"BREMEN."]

"All right," cried Gallagher; "I'll go in and find 'em without any
guide. Hold the ladder, boys."

And up he went!

"I'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and without more words
these two climbed in through the coal-chute and started down the black,
hot, stifling ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got there
safely, and found eight men still alive, all Germans, engineers and
their assistants. But when the firemen called to them to hurry out for
their lives, they refused to move. Their duty was with their engines,
said they; they had to run the engines; they were much obliged to the
American gentlemen, but they could not leave their post.

Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their ears.

"But you will die!" they urged.

The Germans thought it very likely; still they could not leave.

"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; you will be burned
to death."

The Germans understood perfectly: they would be burned to death at their
engines; and as they were all of this mind and not to be shaken, the
firemen could only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return
journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, but at last their
good star prevailed, and they came without harm to their comrades, who
listened in wonder to the news they brought. It seemed such utter folly,
the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, yet there was something
almost splendid in their stubborn devotion to duty. Quietly they had
looked death in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not
flinched; and days later, when the steamer had burned herself out and
lay grounded in the mud, cold and black, the wreckers found these
faithful though mistaken men still at their posts, still by their
engines, where they had waited in spite of everything--where they had
perished.

All this time the _Van Wyck_ had been working on the _Saale_, but in a
harder fight, for the flames raged here as fiercely as on the _Bremen_,
while the smaller fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five
tons of water a minute, which was not enough.

So, now, when all had been done that could be for the _Bremen_, orders
came that the _New-Yorker_, too, turn her streams against the _Saale_,
and a little later the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the
unhappy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing island, and
presently grounded by the bow on the Communipaw mud-flats, and rested
there for the la