n's faces was like the breath of a furnace!

[Illustration: GALLAGHER'S RESCUE OF A SWEDE FROM THE BURNING BARGE.]

Here it was that Gallagher won his place on the roll of honor in this
wise. For some time they had heard shouts that were lost in the din of
conflagration; but presently they made them out as a warning from
somebody somewhere that a man was on a burning barge just passing them.
It seemed incredible that a man could be there, alive and silent; but,
with the spirit of his trade, Gallagher determined to see if it were
true: he would board the barge anyhow; and as the _New-Yorker_ swung
close alongside, he sprang down to her deck, where things were a good
deal warmer than is necessary for a man's health. And as he leaped, John
Kerrigan, at the steering-wheel of Big Daddy, turned its mighty stream
against the barge, keeping it just over Gallagher's head, so that the
spray drenched down upon him while the stream itself smote a path ahead
through the fire.

Down this path went Gallagher, searching for a man, avoiding pitfalls of
smoke and treacherous timbers, confident that Kerrigan would hold the
flames back, yet see to it that the terrible battering-ram of water did
not strike him--for to be struck with the full force of Big Daddy's
stream is like being pounded by a trip-hammer.

Gallagher reached the cabin door, found it locked, put his back against
it and smashed it in. Then he went on, groping, choking, feeling his
way, searching for his man. And at last on one of the bunks he found
him, stretched out in a stupor of sleep or drowsed by the stifle of
gases. The man was a Swede named Thomas Bund, and he came out of that
cabin on Gallagher's back, came off that burning barge on Gallagher's
back, and if he does not bless the name of Gallagher all his days, then
there is no gratitude in Sweden.

Here we see the kind of service the fire-boats render. On this night
they saved the situation and a million dollars besides; they worked
against a blazing steamship, against blazing piers, against blazing
runaways; worked for eleven hours, until the last smolder of fire had
been drowned under thirty thousand tons of water. And not a year passes
but they do something of like sort. Now it is a steamship, say the
ill-starred _Leona_, that comes up the bay with a cargo of cotton
burning between decks. The _New-Yorker_ makes short work of her. Again
it is a blazing lumber district along the river, like the great McClave
y