The Captain gave a slight tap on the floor as a signal for another false alarm. At the first sound of the bell, with one bound the men were out of bed, in another into their combinations, and in a third they were going head over heels down the holes in the floor, just as mice would disappear down theirs at the sight of a cat, and in a second or two I heard again the rumbling of the engine over the pavement.
We escaped before the men were back again to bed, but hardly had I been shown the completeness of everything, and gone into details which I need not repeat here, and had another wink from the old grey mare, which plainly said, "Ah, I knew those alarms were false," when her two ears went up like a flash as she sprang under her harness once more, the other animal as quickly by her side. The third alarm was a genuine one, and she knew it. The Captain and I, as soon as the alarm was given, rushed in the direction of the fire, but we had not got to the first corner before the old mare and her companion flew past, and I just had time to notice that the men were completing their toilet as they were hurled by. Quickly followed the officer of the night in his one-horse trap, and by the time we got to the fire, which was only round a block of buildings, an exhibition of fire engines and appliances was collected there which beggars description. The water tower, a huge affair seventy or eighty feet high, built up like a crane, which shoots water on to the top of the burning building; so also are the hook and ladder brigade, the men with the jumping net--in fact, everything is at hand. This is accounted for by the fact that a policeman at any corner, when giving the alarm of a fire, touches an electric button or turns a handle, which gives the signal at every fire station, unloosing the horses and putting everything into motion at once.
The one weak point in the whole system is that the alarms are not isolated, which means that every signal of fire in the big city of New York disturbs every man and horse at every station, some of them nine miles away from the scene of the conflagration, for so anxious are the men to be up to time that they are often in the street, harnessed, equipped and ready, before the second signal comes to acquaint them with the locality and extent of the fire. At least that was then the system.