The club stopped to deliberate, but in the midst of their deliberations the City Hall bell sounded, and instantly commenced all that furious uproar peculiar to Gotham at the sound of an alarm of fire. A crowd of screaming men and boys came tearing along, dragging Engine No. 32-1/2, which hung back and jumped about, as if determined not to go at any hazard. About half a block in advance of this crazy throng rushed a frantic man, with a red shirt and a tin trumpet. Each individual yelled as if the general resurrection were at hand, and he under special obligations to wake up some particular friend. The rheumatic engine held back with all its power, and seemed, for the moment, endowed with a kind of obstinate vitality. Now it threw its wheel round a lamp-post, then it tumbled against the curb-stone, then it ran its tongue into an awning, then affectionately embraced with its projecting arms a crockery-wagon, and finally, with a kind of inanimate dogged determination not to go ahead, in turning a short corner, it leaped triumphantly astride a hydrant, where it stuck. The men tugged, but the engine held fast; the frantic man in the red shirt came tearing back; he had gone far enough ahead to see that 13-1/4's boys had got their stream on the fire, and he was furious at the delay. One mighty jerk, and the men and boys were piled in a huge kicking mass on the pavement, which phenomenon was occasioned by the unexpected breaking of the rope. The rope was tied, and by a united effort directed at the wheels, the brakes, the tongue, and every get-at-able point, the machine was again started, protesting, with creaks, and groans, and various portentous rumblings in its inner works, against the roughness of its treatment.