st agony.

The story of those tragic hours is not for telling now. There were more
heroic rescues. There were brave attempts at rescue that availed
nothing. The fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roaring
about them and water up to their knees surging past like a mill-race; it
was the return torrent from their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern
settled and the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. In a
large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman gave a noble picture of
resignation in the face of an awful death. Hemmed in there between fire
and water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads for cups of
water passed in through the port-hole, and waved "good-by" as the stern
gave a final lurch and went down.

[Illustration: FIRE-BOATS WORKING ON THE "BREMEN" AND THE "SAALE."]

Nor does this end the record of that day, for there was still the _Main_
to fight for, and at eleven o'clock that night the _New-Yorker_ steamed
up the river and caught the third liner as the flood-tide bore her
stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She had been blazing for
eight hours, and was red-hot now from the water-line up. It seemed
incredible that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they went
to work in the old way, and within an hour had dragged out through the
coal-hole a blackened and frightened company, more than a score of
boiler-cleaners and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through those
fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest bunkers far below the
water-level.

After this the fire-boats did other things.

THE AERIAL ACROBAT

I

SHOWING THAT IT TAKES MORE THAN MUSCLE AND SKILL TO WORK ON THE HIGH
BARS

A FEW years ago I had the pleasure of traveling for ten days with a
great circus, and in this way came to know some very interesting
people--elephant-keepers, lion-tamers, trapeze performers, bareback
riders, not to mention the bearded lady, the dog-faced boy, and other
side-show celebrities who used to eat with us in the cook-tent--there
was one gentleman, appareled in blue velvet, who ate with his feet, for
the reason that he had no arms, and would reach across for salt or
butter with an easy knee-and-ankle movement that was a perpetual
surprise.

What strange things one sees traveling with a circus! Every night there
is a mile of trains to be loaded, every morning a tented city to be
built. Such hard work for everybody! Two performances a day, bes