John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with
what his comrades called Japanitis.
Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second
story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of the
day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of both the
Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in the
map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved about from
day to day, in conformity with the war news in the daily papers.
Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and
then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would
hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed off, huckleberry eyed,
monkey faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little sleight o' hand, bow
legged bull terriers—give ‘em another of them Yalu looloos, and you'll eat
rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians—say, wouldn't they give
you painsky when it comes to a scrapovitch?"
Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic
champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to
keep clear of Engine House No. 99.
Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That was
when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver's
seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the
whole department—according to the crew of 99.
Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his
fellow mortals, the greatest are these—the code of King Arthur's Knights
of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and the
unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods
are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach of
promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more
unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be considered
in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries's new punch trying for
place and show.
The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire
Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law
will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes
perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention
of the S.P.C.A.
One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of
protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward
kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven,
seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was . hustled ashore and ejected
into the city in the name of Liberty— perhaps, theoretically, thus
inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This
hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the
city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not burdened with
baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely built and clothed in a
sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat
nose, and was mostly covered by a thick ragged, curling beard like the
coat of a spaniel.
In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few coins—denarii— scudi—kopecks—pfennings—pilasters—whatever
the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.
Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and
movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had
shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as far
as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. Light as a cork, he was
kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all the silt of
the stream that emptied into the reservoir of Liberty.
While crossing Third Avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the
thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the
wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in the
uproar—the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining juggernaut
belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying to see.
This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the
protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad,
enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path
of No. 99's flying hose cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of
steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe.
The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or
amendments. It is a simple thing—as simple as the rule of three. There was
the needless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart, and the
iron pillar of the elevated railroad.
John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team
and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The
men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the
pillar rang with a shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a
broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven black,
best loved Erebus—lay whickering in the harness with a broken leg.
In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details
will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that
day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the
ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard the crack of
the S.P.C.A. agent's pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to
look toward Erebus again.
When the firemen got back to the engine house they found that one of
them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and grief.
They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about it.
Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently and
waved its hands.
"Sounds like a seidlitz powder," said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, "and
it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!—that hoss was worth a
steamer full of such two legged animals. It's a immigrant— that's what it
is."
"Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk
man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of
them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto
us."
"Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in
hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city," groaned another
fireman. "It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned."
"Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver,
"and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of hair
and head noises."
Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third Avenue,
and was reputed to be a linguist.
One of the men fetched him—a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye
and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him.
"Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski,"
requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from the
Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong on the Ganges."
Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects, that ranged in
rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsillitis gargle to the
opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant
replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale.
"I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce it.
Writing of it in paper is better." They gave him paper, and he wrote, "Demetre
Svangvsk."
"Looks like short hand," said the desk man.
"He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his
forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he have
some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Roumanian, but
not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not quite understand."
"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike,
frowning at the polyglot description.
"He is a"—answered Sloviski—"he is a—I dink he come from— I dink he is
a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, "and if you
pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen."
"Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to
watch him fly."
Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of
Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine house and bestowed upon
him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99.
Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his
ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen.
In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. With
great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. "My money on the
Japs every time," he declared. "Why, look at them Russians—they're nothing
but wolves. Wipe 'em out, I say—and the little old jiujitsu gang are just
the cherry blossoms to do the trick, and don't you forget it!"
The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, the
unidentified, to the engine house, with a broader grin than ever. He
managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose cart
driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident.
This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive noises
that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked him out
again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How or where he lived no
one knew. And then John Byrnes's nine year old son, Chris, who brought him
convalescent delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and
they allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine house occasionally.
One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commissioner
buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside for an
informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder than
usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, in which everything shone
like my lady's mirror.
The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of
Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would do
him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed the Deputy how
deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in horsedom.
While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into the
Deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a monster puffing
and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. The big auto shot
away, luckily taking a straight course down the
street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the
cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped the
auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such
a stoppage.
Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another kick
when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for the
door Demetre sprang forJoe. He glided upon the horse's bare back like a
snake and shouted something at him like the crack of a dozen whips. One of
the firemen afterward swore that Joe answered him back in the same
language. Ten seconds after the auto started the big horse was eating up
the asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni.
Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said that
the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the middle of
it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its back
cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over and picked the
black speck out of the noise.
Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands— or
rather the feet—of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through the door
with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was going to
receive.
Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and made a
noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his
nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen.
John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked.
Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre grinned
anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment.
"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen a
Wild West show—"they're the greatest riders in the world."
The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever.
"Yes—yes—me Cossack," he spluttered, striking his chest.
"Cossack!" repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of a
Russian?"
"They're one of the Russian tribes, sure," said the desk man, who read
books between fire alarms.
Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know of
the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine house and called to Byrnes.
"Hello there, Jimmy, me boy—how's the war coming along? Japs still got
the bear on the trot, have they?"
"Oh, I don't know," said John Byrnes, argumentatively, "them Japs
haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack at 'em
and they won't be knee high to a puddle ducksky.”
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