Just as he got established in his seat, he saw a stream from another engine beginning to issue from its pipe, and to rise up towards the building. The man who held the pipe stood upon the top of the engine, and he held it in such a way as to direct it towards one of the upper windows. Rollo could see the red flame through the window, as the shutter had been burned, and all the glass had fallen away; and, now and then, a great puff of flame would come out, when any momentary change in the wind drove the fire in that direction. The stream of water went directly in at the window. At first, it produced very little effect; but presently he observed that it began to deaden the redness of the fire just within the window. Rollo thought that this engine was far more powerful than the one which he had noticed before. That still continued to play around behind the building. Rollo occasionally got a glimpse of other jets, coming from engines which were standing on that side. Sometimes these jets came away over the top of the building, and Rollo could see them broken into drops as their force was spent, but still shooting forward through the flames in regular pulsations, produced by the successive strokes of the engines from which they came.
By all these means, the fire was soon perceptibly diminished. The window into which the engine was playing soon ceased to look red at all; and presently Rollo saw a tall ladder rising slowly above the heads of the crowd. The lower end of it was nearly under the window, which he had been noticing, while the other end extended almost across the street, and slowly rose. Rollo was expecting every moment to see it fall back upon the heads of the people who were under it; but it did not. It ascended slowly and steadily, until the upper end passed over, and fell against the building, a little above the window. In a moment, a man appeared at the foot, climbing up the rounds laboriously, as if he was carrying up a burden which made him mount with difficulty. Rollo saw, pretty soon, that he had an engine pipe in his hands; and presently he observed that it was the same man whom he had seen before, holding the pipe of the engine, and directing the stream into the window. The man ascended slowly, dragging up the pipe, and the hose which was attached to the bottom of it, until, at length, when the hose became so long that he could not lift it any farther, another man took hold below, and presently another; and at last there were four men at different parts of the ladder, all lifting up the hose.