III
That was the beginning of the great Fishbourne fire, which burnt its
way sideways into Mr. Rusper's piles of crates and straw, and
backwards to the petrol and stabling of the Royal Fishbourne Hotel,
and spread from that basis until it seemed half Fishbourne would be
ablaze. The east wind, which had been gathering in strength all that
day, fanned the flame; everything was dry and ready, and the little
shed beyond Rumbold's in which the local Fire Brigade kept its manual,
was alight before the Fishbourne fire hose could be saved from
disaster. In marvellously little time a great column of black smoke,
shot with red streamers, rose out of the middle of the High Street,
and all Fishbourne was alive with excitement.
Much of the more respectable elements of Fishbourne society was in
church or chapel; many, however, had been tempted by the blue sky and
the hard freshness of spring to take walks inland, and there had been
the usual disappearance of loungers and conversationalists from the
beach and the back streets when at the hour of six the shooting of
bolts and the turning of keys had ended the British Ramadan, that
weekly interlude of drought our law imposes. The youth of the place
were scattered on the beach or playing in back yards, under threat if
their clothes were dirtied, and the adolescent were disposed in pairs
among the more secluded corners to be found upon the outskirts of the
place. Several godless youths, seasick but fishing steadily, were
tossing upon the sea in old Tarbold's, the infidel's, boat, and the
Clamps were entertaining cousins from Port Burdock. Such few visitors
as Fishbourne could boast in the spring were at church or on the
beach. To all these that column of smoke did in a manner address
itself. "Look here!" it said, "this, within limits, is your affair;
what are you going to do?"
The three hobbledehoys, had it been a weekday and they in working
clothes, might have felt free to act, but the stiffness of black was
upon them and they simply moved to the corner by Rusper's to take a
better view of Mr. Polly beating at the door. The policeman was a
young, inexpert constable with far too lively a sense of the public
house. He put his head inside the Private Bar to the horror of
everyone there. But there was no breach of the law, thank Heaven!
"Polly's and Rumbold's on fire!" he said, and vanished again. A window
in the top story over Boomer's shop opened, and Boomer, captain of the
Fire Brigade, appeared, staring out with a blank expression. Still
staring, he began to fumble with his collar and tie; manifestly he had
to put on his uniform. Hinks' dog, which had been lying on the
pavement outside Wintershed's, woke up, and having regarded Mr. Polly
suspiciously for some time, growled nervously and went round the
corner into Granville Alley. Mr. Polly continued to beat and kick at
Rumbold's door.
Then the public houses began to vomit forth the less desirable
elements of Fishbourne society, boys and men were moved to run and
shout, and more windows went up as the stir increased. Tashingford,
the chemist, appeared at his door, in shirt sleeves and an apron, with
his photographic plate holders in his hand. And then like a vision of
purpose came Mr. Gambell, the greengrocer, running out of Clayford's
Alley and buttoning on his jacket as he ran. His great brass fireman's
helmet was on his head, hiding it all but the sharp nose, the firm
mouth, the intrepid chin. He ran straight to the fire station and
tried the door, and turned about and met the eye of Boomer still at
his upper window. "The key!" cried Mr. Gambell, "the key!"
Mr. Boomer made some inaudible explanation about his trousers and half
a minute.
"Seen old Rumbold?" cried Mr. Polly, approaching Mr. Gambell.
"Gone over Downford for a walk," said Mr. Gambell. "He told me! But
look 'ere! We 'aven't got the key!"
"Lord!" said Mr. Polly, and regarded the china shop with open eyes. He
_knew_ the old woman must be there alone. He went back to the shop
front and stood surveying it in infinite perplexity. The other
activities in the street did not interest him. A deaf old lady
somewhere upstairs there! Precious moments passing! Suddenly he was
struck by an idea and vanished from public vision into the open door
of the Royal Fishbourne Tap.
And now the street was getting crowded and people were laying their
hands to this and that.
Mr. Rusper had been at home reading a number of tracts upon Tariff
Reform, during the quiet of his wife's absence in church, and trying
to work out the application of the whole question to ironmongery. He
heard a clattering in the street and for a time disregarded it, until
a cry of Fire! drew him to the window. He pencilled-marked the tract
of Chiozza Money's that he was reading side by side with one by Mr.
Holt Schooling, made a hasty note "Bal. of Trade say 12,000,000" and
went to look out. Instantly he opened the window and ceased to believe
the Fiscal Question the most urgent of human affairs.
"Good (kik) Gud!" said Mr. Rusper.
For now the rapidly spreading blaze had forced the partition into Mr.
Rumbold's premises, swept across his cellar, clambered his garden wall
by means of his well-tarred mushroom shed, and assailed the engine
house. It stayed not to consume, but ran as a thing that seeks a
quarry. Polly's shop and upper parts were already a furnace, and black
smoke was coming out of Rumbold's cellar gratings. The fire in the
engine house showed only as a sudden rush of smoke from the back, like
something suddenly blown up. The fire brigade, still much under
strength, were now hard at work in the front of the latter building;
they had got the door open all too late, they had rescued the fire
escape and some buckets, and were now lugging out their manual, with
the hose already a dripping mass of molten, flaring, stinking rubber.
Boomer was dancing about and swearing and shouting; this direct attack
upon his apparatus outraged his sense of chivalry. The rest of the
brigade hovered in a disheartened state about the rescued fire escape,
and tried to piece Boomer's comments into some tangible instructions.
"Hi!" said Rusper from the window. "Kik! What's up?"
Gambell answered him out of his helmet. "Hose!" he cried. "Hose gone!"
"I (kik) got hose!" cried Rusper.
He had. He had a stock of several thousand feet of garden hose, of
various qualities and calibres, and now he felt was the time to use
it. In another moment his shop door was open and he was hurling pails,
garden syringes, and rolls of garden hose out upon the pavement.
"(Kik)," he cried, "undo it!" to the gathering crowd in the roadway.
They did. Presently a hundred ready hands were unrolling and spreading
and tangling up and twisting and hopelessly involving Mr. Rusper's
stock of hose, sustained by an unquenchable assurance that presently
it would in some manner contain and convey water, and Mr. Rusper, on
his knees, (kiking) violently, became incredibly busy with wire and
brass junctions and all sorts of mysteries.
"Fix it to the (kik) bathroom tap!" said Mr. Rusper.
Next door to the fire station was Mantell and Throbson's, the little
Fishbourne branch of that celebrated firm, and Mr. Boomer, seeking in
a teeming mind for a plan of action, had determined to save this
building. "Someone telephone to the Port Burdock and Hampstead-on-Sea
fire brigades," he cried to the crowd and then to his fellows: "Cut
away the woodwork of the fire station!" and so led the way into the
blaze with a whirling hatchet that effected wonders in no time in
ventilation.
But it was not, after all, such a bad idea of his. Mantell and
Throbsons was separated from the fire station in front by a covered
glass passage, and at the back the roof of a big outhouse sloped down
to the fire station leads. The sturdy 'longshoremen, who made up the
bulk of the fire brigade, assailed the glass roof of the passage with
extraordinary gusto, and made a smashing of glass that drowned for a
time the rising uproar of the flames.
A number of willing volunteers started off to the new telephone office
in obedience to Mr. Boomer's request, only to be told with cold
official politeness by the young lady at the exchange that all that
had been done on her own initiative ten minutes ago. She parleyed with
these heated enthusiasts for a space, and then returned to the window.
And indeed the spectacle was well worth looking at. The dusk was
falling, and the flames were showing brilliantly at half a dozen
points. The Royal Fishbourne Hotel Tap, which adjoined Mr. Polly to
the west, was being kept wet by the enthusiastic efforts of a string
of volunteers with buckets of water, and above at a bathroom window
the little German waiter was busy with the garden hose. But Mr.
Polly's establishment looked more like a house afire than most houses
on fire contrive to look from start to finish. Every window showed
eager flickering flames, and flames like serpents' tongues were
licking out of three large holes in the roof, which was already
beginning to fall in. Behind, larger and abundantly spark-shot gusts
of fire rose from the fodder that was now getting alight in the Royal
Fishbourne Hotel stables. Next door to Mr. Polly, Mr. Rumbold's house
was disgorging black smoke from the gratings that protected its
underground windows, and smoke and occasional shivers of flame were
also coming out of its first-floor windows. The fire station was
better alight at the back than in front, and its woodwork burnt pretty
briskly with peculiar greenish flickerings, and a pungent flavour. In
the street an inaggressively disorderly crowd clambered over the
rescued fire escape and resisted the attempts of the three local
constables to get it away from the danger of Mr. Polly's tottering
façade, a cluster of busy forms danced and shouted and advised on the
noisy and smashing attempt to cut off Mantell and Throbson's from the
fire station that was still in ineffectual progress. Further a number
of people appeared to be destroying interminable red and grey snakes
under the heated direction of Mr. Rusper; it was as if the High Street
had a plague of worms, and beyond again the more timid and less active
crowded in front of an accumulation of arrested traffic. Most of the
men were in Sabbatical black, and this and the white and starched
quality of the women and children in their best clothes gave a note of
ceremony to the whole affair.
For a moment the attention of the telephone clerk was held by the
activities of Mr. Tashingford, the chemist, who, regardless of
everyone else, was rushing across the road hurling fire grenades into
the fire station and running back for more, and then her eyes lifted
to the slanting outhouse roof that went up to a ridge behind the
parapet of Mantell and Throbson's. An expression of incredulity came
into the telephone operator's eyes and gave place to hard activity.
She flung up the window and screamed out: "Two people on the roof up
there! Two people on the roof!"
