“There’s a gong here, too, you see, as well as down stairs, and when the alarm rings, the fireman jumps out of bed and, you might say, right into his turnout, pulls the trousers up and runs for the sliding pole, and there’s a race every time to see who will get down first. The driver and engineer always sleep next to the poles so that they can get down ahead of the others. Down stairs there are two men on duty all the time at night. When the alarm sounds and the horses run to their places, these men must be at their heads to snap their collars and hitch the reins to their bits. The driver jumps into his seat, and the instant he sees that the harness is on all right, and that he has the number of the box from which the alarm has come, he starts away as fast as he can go. He doesn’t wait to find out whether the engineer is there, or whether the other men have slid down the pole and are in their places—that’s their business, not his. He has just one idea, and that is to get out into the street as soon as he can, and get to the fire before any other engine. The captain of the company rides on the ash-pan behind the engineer. His lieutenant rides with the driver of the tender, and the other men ride on the tender.” Just at this moment the gong rang sharply, and the horses, released from their stalls by the same electric current, sprang to their places in front of engine and hose carriage, and then a moment later trotted quietly back again. “That’s twelve o’clock that’s just sounded,” exclaimed Chief Trask, “and the horses always jump into their places every time the gong sounds. It wouldn’t do to leave it to their judgment whether they should turn out or not, and besides, frequent alarms keep them from getting rusty. If they only turned out when there was a regular alarm, they would stay here sometimes two to three days at a time and that wouldn’t be good for men or horses either. It’s only by constant practice that we can be kept always on the alert. You know that at sea they often ring a false fire alarm, just for the sake of keeping the ship’s fire brigade in practice. Now Captain Murphy will show you the tender, or hose wagon as they used to call it.” Accordingly the captain showed Bruce the two great coils of hose, and the different nozzles fitted for different emergencies, and he told him how the hook and ladder truck served at a fire very much in the same capacity as the sapper and miner corps in the army.