Outside, on the ground below, the people are gazing in terror and intense satisfaction. Here is a spectacle for you, if you please, here the end of a dull routine of many days. The fire-god has broken loose. The demon flame is trying his skill against the children of men and the demon water. He has caught them unawares. He has seized upon the place where the best of their ammunition is stored. From his fortress in the cellar he is hurling huge forks of flame and great gusts of heat. Before him now men and women stand helpless. White-faced onlookers gaze upward with expressions of mingled joy and pain. Clang! Clang! Clang! And the wail of a siren. And yet another. And yet another. They announce the men of the Fortieth Hook and Ladder Company, of the Twenty-seventh Hook and Ladder and Fire Patrol, of the Thirty-third Engine and Hook and Ladder Company, and the Fifty-first Engine and Hose Company, down through a long list of stations covering an area of a half-dozen square miles. In the midst of the uproar about the burning building, the metallic cry of this rescuing host is becoming more and more apparent. From every section they come, the glistening surfaces of their polished vehicles and implements shining in the sun, the stacks of their engines issuing volumes of smoke. Fire boxes drop fiery sparks as they speed past neighboring corners, the firemen stoking as they come. Groups of hook-and-ladder handlers are unhooking and making ready their ladders. Others, standing upright on their careening vehicles, are adjusting rubber coats and making ready to invade the precincts of danger at once. The art of balancing on one foot while tugging at great coils of hose that are being uncoiled from speeding vehicles is being deftly illustrated. These men like this sort of thing. It is something to do. They are trained men, ready to fight the fire demon at a moment’s notice, and they are going about their work with the ease and grace of those who feel the show as well as the importance of that which they do. Once more, after days of humdrum, they are the center of a tragedy, the cynosure of many eyes. It is exhilarating thus to be gazed at, as any one can see. They swing down from their machines in front of this holocaust with the nonchalance of men going to a dinner.