"These are the boys that cost the money," said Taylor. "If the inside isn't polished like a mirror the water doesn't come smooth. And the least little dent makes the stream ragged and broken. Nothing looks worse--and it isn't as effective on the fire. It ought to be thrown like a solid rod of water. I can't get the boys to realize that the slightest bruise, dent, or burr throws the stream in a ragged feathery foam. The result of that is that a lot of water is dissipated and lost." Keith, who had taken hold of the nozzle rather negligently, returned it with the reverent care due crown jewels. "How long a stream will it throw?" he asked. "With thirty men on a side she's done a hundred and twelve feet high, and two hundred and eighteen for distance," said Bert with simple pride. He picked up the nozzle again. "See here. Here's an invention of my own. Cost money to put it in, too, because every other nozzle on earth is made wrong." He explained that other nozzles are made so that the thread of the hose screwed into the nozzle; while in his, the thread of the nozzle screwed into the hose. "If there's a leak or a bad connection," explained Bert, "with the old type, the water is blown back into the fireman's face, and he is blinded. His whole efficiency depends on a close joint. But with my scheme the leak is blown forward, away from the lineman. It's a perfectly sound scheme, but I can't make them see it." "Sounds reasonable," observed Keith, examining perfunctorily a device to which later he was to owe his life. Item by item they went over the details of equipment--the scaling ladders, the jumping sheets, the branch pipes, the suction pipes, the flat roses, standcocks, goose necks, the dogtails, dam boards, shovels, saws, poleaxes, hooks, and ropes. From a consideration of them the two branched off to the generalities of fire fighting. Keith learned that the combating of a fire, the driving it into a corner, outflanking it, was a fine art. "I say always, _get in close_," said Taylor. "A fire can be _put_ out as well as just drowned out." It struck Keith as interesting that in a room a stream should always be directed at the top of a fire, so that the water running down helps extinguish the flames below, whereas in attack at the bottom or centre merely puts out the immediate blaze, leaving the rest to spread upward or sideways. Taylor put himself on record against fighting fire from the street. "Don't want a whole lot of water and row," he maintained. "Get in close quarters and make every drop count." When Bert's enthusiasm palled, Keith always found men in the reading-room. The engine house was a sort of clearing house for politics, business schemes, personal affairs, or differences.