“Hi! hi! hi!” There was the fire bursting from the fourth-story windows of an old-fashioned brick warehouse, almost beside them; but there was no let-up in the speed till the last moment. Then the engine stopped “all at once,” as Dick said to himself; and the tender stopped close by a fire hydrant, and some of the men began to unwind part of the fifteen lengths, seven hundred and fifty feet, of hose it carried. Number Four was the first engine on the spot, being nearest the fire; and even in his excitement Dick could not help but admire the beautiful system with which everything was done. The foreman of the first company to arrive was in charge of the fire till the battalion chief arrived in his wagon; and the battalion chief was in command till the chief of the whole department came. But wonderfully few orders were given, because every man knew just what to do and did it. A pipe was run from the hydrant to the engine, and the hose was attached to the engine’s discharge pipe. Four men meanwhile were throwing their weight against the steel doors of the building; for the warehouse was provided with outer doors and shutters of steel. But the doors would not yield, and out came the axes from the tender. Crash! crash! Ah, how those big axes cut through the steel! In a few seconds the doors were cut away as if they had been made of pasteboard. “Man the pipe!” Dick had not been told what his duties were to be at an actual fire. But his blood was up; he was bound to do something, and seeing four men enter the doorway with the line of hose, he sprang forward and joined them in a scramble up the steep wooden stairways of the burning building. As he passed through the doorway a long hook-and-ladder truck came dashing down Pearl Street. Up they went with a rush to the top story, dragging the hose with them. There was hardly time to take a long breath before a stream of water was playing upon the fire. Through the windows Dick saw the ladders from the long truck, and in a minute more firemen of another company were cutting a hole through the roof and throwing in their own stream of water. The smoke was blinding, but the fire was soon under control. When the order was given to “shut off Number Four,” Dick returned to the street, where he found the scene greatly changed. Hundreds of people had gathered, and the police had formed the “fire lines” to keep them back out of danger. Several more engines were in sight, and three long extension ladders reached the top of the building. Besides, there was a big wagon that he recognized as the property of the fire patrol; a wagon filled with rubber blankets, which the men spread over the goods in the lower stories to protect them from damage by water.