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were conducted to the dais where Mary and Philip had dined, with only each other and Bishop Gardiner for company. When they found themselves in the presence of royalty, every boy felt his heart beat faster, and had a sudden fear lest now, at the critical moment, his tongue should cleave to the roof of his mouth, and the laboriously composed Latin verses go unrecited, after all.

However, they all managed to get through fairly well; and Mary was too radiantly happy to be very critical. Philip, too, who wished to find favor with his wife's subjects, was pleased to express his approval; and so all the boys. were liberally rewarded for their efforts, and doubtless went away feeling themselves to be geniuses of the first water.

All but Ned. He recited last of all, and somehow, when he had finished, the Queen spoke so kindly and encouragingly that, almost without his knowing what he said, the words slipped out:

other, though regarding with ill-concealed distaste each other's foreign looks and ways.

Presently, Rosamund had reached the dais, and had kissed the hand of her sovereign, and of the King of Naples: for such had Prince Philip been created by his father, according to a paper read aloud that morning in the cathedral.

"Thy name, my little maiden ?" the Queen's deep tones were saying.

"Rosamund Walton, your Majesty," answered Rosamund, scarcely recognizing the sound of her own voice.

"Thy brother saith thou hast composed certain lines in honor of our marriage, Rosamund; and the King and I would gladly hear them. Canst thou say them to us?" Rosamund looked up, glanced from Mary's radiant face with its dark, shining eyes, to Philip's, cold and mysterious, and wearing a forced smile; and, somehow, she felt very sorry for the Queen. This feeling made her forget

“Oh, Madam, if you could but hear my her embarrassment, and added a thrill to her sister's poem!"

The next instant he was frightened at his boldness; but the Queen was smiling, and evidently not at all displeased.

"Ah!" she said, "so you have a sister, and she also hath composed some verses in honor of our marriage? I should like greatly to hear them."

"They are beautiful!" said Ned with enthusiasm. "They are much better than any of ours."

Mary turned to Philip, and with a smile said something in the Castilian tongue. "We must really hear that," she said, turning to Ned once more. "Suppose you fetch hither that clever sister. Tell her we would fain hear her epithalamium too."

Rosamund could scarcely believe it, when Ned came rushing in and told her that she, too, must go and recite before the Queen. The quick walk through the streets with her father and Ned seemed like a dream to her. So, too, did the arrival at the Bishop's palace, and the great hall where the long tables were spread, and where the English and Spanish courts were, for the present, making the best of each

voice; and so she stood up straight and recited her simple verses, not knowing what a pretty picture she made, nor that all eyes in the hall were fixed on her.

And when she finished speaking, there was first a little pause, such as Ned had made when she had recited it to him; and then the Queen bent forward to say, cordially, "Thank you, my dear"; and a buzz of praise was heard to pass around.

Philip spoke in Spanish, and Mary turned to Rosamund again.

"The King is very much pleased with thy verses," she said, as if there were no higher praise in all the world than that. "He says the English maids are as clever as they are fair; and he gives thee this jewel to thank thee for thy fine poesy. And this," she added, taking a very beautiful and valuable bracelet from her own arm, "I hope thou wilt wear sometimes to keep thee in mind of how much Queen Mary was delighted by thy poem upon her wedding-day."

She spoke also some kind and encouraging words to Master Walton, and then the audience

was over.

In the pages of the historians or of some

of them it is written how the boys of Winchester were allowed to come in and recite their Latin verses before the Queen and Philip; but of the one girl there is no mention made. Rosamund, however, had no thought of the historians when she composed her verses, so it would have grieved her little to know she was to be

ignored by them. Philip's jewel was afterward sold for a sum which was a fair dowry for her when she married, but the bracelet Rosamund kept all her life; and upon the Queen for whom so many had cruel words in the days that came after, she never pronounced a harsher judgment than, "Poor lady!”

FLOATING FIRE-ENGINES.

By C. T. HILL.

WITH the growth of a large city, the protection of the water-front from the ravages of fire becomes an important study, almost as important as the study of fire protection for the city itself. Nearly every large city in the United States owes its growth to its nearness to some body of water, either lake, river, or sea, which offers exceptional advantages for the transportation of immense quantities of merchandise, and also provides harborage for all manner of craft engaged in this work.

This merchandise has to be stored somewhere during the process of loading and unloading these vessels, and the big warehouses and wharf-buildings along the water-front serve this purpose; but very often the most valuable cargoes are stored for a time in the flimsiest kind of buildings, needing but a spark to start a destructive conflagration.

As a city increases in size its importance as a freight-center grows in proportion; and the value of freight and merchandise stored along shore, during transit, in a big city like New York, can only be imagined. No reasonable valuation can be given, for we should have to dive too deeply into the amounts of imports and exports to get anywhere near the truth; but it is safe to say that one hundred millions would scarcely cover the property exposed to the danger of fire, in a single day, among the piers and wharfhouses of New York City.

Nor is this danger confined to piers and wharf-buildings alone, but vessels in the act of

loading and unloading valuable cargoes, the big bonded warehouses along the river-front, the docks for great ocean-steamers, and the freight stations of many big railroads are also exposed to this risk, and need to be well protected, for a serious fire among them would destroy more valuable property than perhaps a fire of the same extent in the very heart of the city.

Fires along shore are difficult ones to handle. There is always more or less wind near the water; if a gale is blowing it seems to have twice as much force on the water-front, and a fire once started here spreads very rapidly. Then fires on the piers, or in the wharf buildings, are usually very hard to fight;- although there is plenty of water all around, it is difficult to apply it to good effect. The land forces can only fight such a fire from one position—the street side; and if the wind is blowing inland it drives the smoke and fire directly at them, and makes it nearly impossible to hold this position. It is here that the floating fire-engine or fire-boat can do its valuable work; and New York possesses a fleet of such vessels-three boats that are fully able to cope with a fire of almost any size, whether it be among the shipping, alongshore, or anywhere in the harbor.

Foremost among these vessels stands the fireboat " New Yorker " (officially known as Engine Co. No. 57), as she is without doubt the most powerful fire-boat afloat. The New Yorker's berth is at the Battery, where she lies beside a

tasteful building erected by the Fire Department as a housing for her crew or company. This building is fitted up with all the requirements of an engine-house-bunk-room upstairs, sliding-poles to make a quick descent to the ground floor, and a complete set of telegraph instruments, to inform the company of all alarms throughout the city. She lies with steam up, at all times ready to respond in an instant to any alarm, whether it be by telegraph or a cry for assistance from a burning boat in mid-river. She will dash up the river to attack a burning pier or warehouse, or down the bay to meet an incoming steamship with its cargo afire, with the same activity. Her powerful pumps make her almost invincible in any kind of marine fire, and she is also a valuable assistant to the landforces.

As she lies at her berth by the Battery she attracts a great deal of attention from all new arrivals in the harbor, and on account of her formidable appearance she is usually put down as some new-fangled torpedo-throwing addition to our navy, for with the rows of brass-headed hose-connections along the side of the deckhouse, and the vicious-looking stand-pipes, or "monitor-nozzles" as they are called, mounted fore and aft, she certainly has a defiant and business-like appearance.

In build she looks like a rather handsome tug. She is 125 feet long, 26 feet wide, and draws about 13 feet of water. She is built of steel and iron throughout, making her thoroughly fire-proof, even the top of the wheelhouse and cabin being made of a kind of cement as hard as stone. There is little woodwork about her to ignite, and she is thus enabled to approach very close to a fire and deliver her powerful streams at short range. She has two very large boilers and four sets (eight in all) of vertical, double-acting steampumps, and one additional small direct-acting pump.

These pumps have a throwing capacity of fully 10,000 gallons of water every minute, and under the best conditions they have been known to reach 12,000 gallons a minute, over 6000 gallons more than any other fire-boat afloat. The water is drawn in through the sides of the boat, below the water-line, into what is

known as the "suction-bay," making an inner reservoir from which the pumps are fed.

There are about 10,000 little holes, 3/8-inch in diameter, bored in the sides of the boat just outside these suction-bays, and through these holes the water is drawn in, and filtered so that no foreign substance may get into the pumps. From the pumps it is forced into an air-chamber, thus equalizing the pressure all around, and then into a veritable water-main 12 inches in diameter, which runs all around the boat, between decks, and supplies the various outlets. There are forty-two of these outlets (including the four stand-pipes or monitornozzles), and they vary in size from 6 inches in diameter down to 21⁄2 inches (the size of the regulation fire-hose). Two of the monitor nozzles are mounted aft, on top of the cabin, and a big and a small one on top of the wheel-house. The two stand-pipes aft have 21⁄2-inch nozzles, the big one on the wheel-house, having a 31⁄2inch opening. From the latter a solid 31⁄2-inch stream can be thrown a distance of 320 feet, and if necessary this can be increased to a 51⁄2inch opening, and a mighty stream of water, having that width, can be sent thundering out into space over 200 feet. hear this immense stream as its pours into the bay, like a miniature cataract, you could better appreciate the power of this remarkable boat.

If you could

No body of fire could very long withstand a deluge like this, and it requires only a few dashes of this massive stream to effectively quench a fire in the rigging or in the upper works of a ship. The small monitor nozzle, mounted on the other side of the wheel-house, has a 134-inch opening, and a powerful stream can also be thrown from this, and, of course, to a much greater distance, for, as the stream is reduced in diameter, it can go a great deal farther.

To the outlets along the side of the deckhouse and at the bow and stern are attached short lengths of hose, to fight fire at close range. The pumps of the New Yorker are so powerful, and the pressure at these outlets is so great, that it would be impossible for men to handle these lines if there were not some sort of machinery to aid them, and therefore an appliance known as a "rail-pipe" is brought into play.

This is something like a big rowlock, and is set in the gunwale in the same manner that a rowlock is set in the rail of a row-boat. It is fastened beneath the rail with a pin, and between the forks is swung an iron connection, oarfashion, pivoted at the sides. The short length of hose is attached to one end of this connection, and a nozzle to the other, and with this device one man is able to control and direct the heaviest stream with ease. The monitor nozzles also can be managed by one man each. The fire-proof construction of the New

two thicknesses of corrugated iron, with an air space between, thus preventing the inner lining from becoming heated. They are arched at the top, and in shape are somewhat like the shields used to protect the gunners while working at the rapid-firing guns on our modern men-of-war.

There is an opening at the bottom of these shields for the nozzles of the rail-pipes to project through, and an oblong slot above for the fireman to look through and direct the water. With the aid of this protection for the men and because of her own salamander-like construc

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