“Oh, that is only a beginning,” the chief said. “Come upstairs now till I show you where we live. You see this pole running up? It goes all the way to the roof, and is for the men to slide down when they are in a hurry. If they happen to be up above when an alarm comes, they don’t think of using the stairs but slide down the pole. It is smooth and perfectly safe. That’s what you will have to do if you want to catch the engine at night. You saw how quickly everything is done. We go out of the door in ten or eleven seconds after the first tap of the bell, day or night, and you’d never catch us if you waited for the stairs. If you get there in time, jump right up on the ash-box with the engineer and fireman at the rear of the engine. We can’t wait for you, you know.” Dick looked critically at the slippery pole and the distance to the ground floor. “I’ll be there,” he said confidently. “I can go down that pole as fast as anybody.” “Now here is where the men sleep,” the chief went on; “here in the third story. Each man has his little iron bed and”-- “Tap-tap!” said the great gong and a smaller one up in the sleeping-room. Dick did not wait for the third tap. He knew that the engine might be out of the house in ten seconds, and it was his duty to catch it. He sprang for the pole, threw his arms around it, and slid down to the ground floor as if he had been shot out of a cannon. In a fraction of a second more he was in his place on the ash-box of the engine. But there was none of the commotion below that he had expected to see. Instead, there came a clapping of hands and some laughter and shouts of,-- “Bravo, reporter! you’re on time!” “Good for the newspaper man!” “The Transport never gets left, does it?” “You’ll do for a fireman,” said the foreman, trying hard not to laugh; “but that bell was only the twelve o’clock time signal. We don’t go out for that.” CHAPTER XIV. A NIGHT RIDE ON A FIRE ENGINE. The comfort of Dick’s stay in the engine-house depended very largely upon how he took this laughter at his expense, and he was shrewd enough to know it. He had mistaken the noontime signal, when the correct city time is sent to every engine-house for a fire alarm, and the fun-loving firemen could not lose such a good chance to laugh at him. There was no danger, though, that Dick would lose his temper, and so make himself the butt of countless other jokes. He enjoyed his mistake as much as any of them and laughed with the rest, and so began a pleasant acquaintance with the men that was an advantage to him in a business way, for they all had good stories to tell. “Every house ought to have a pole like that,” he laughed; “it’s ever so much easier than coming downstairs.” Returning to the third story, he went about with the chief to see the men’s sleeping-room and the big sitting-room on the second floor, where they amuse themselves with checkers, chess, dominoes, and newspapers and magazines.