New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [149]
He frowned. That was odd. The wind was blowing the other way.
Then he noticed something.
By the time Hudson got home, the blaze had spread over a whole block. He found Master and the rest of the household already up. “Breeze’ll bring it this way, Boss,” he announced, “an’ there’s no firemen.”
“Not much we can do, then,” said Master grimly.
But that was when young Mr. Albion spoke up.
“I think, sir,” he said, “we could try.”
When Mr. Albion had first arrived at the house, the Boss had been quick to see his opportunity. Within a day, he had Albion and two other young officers quartered there. “Mr. Albion’s our personal friend, Hudson,” he’d explained. “And I’d rather house some junior officers here as guests, than have to move out for some colonel.” Undoubtedly young Mr. Albion seemed very gentlemanly, and the two other officers gave no trouble.
That night, certainly, they were splendid. In no time they had the household filling every available container with water. Solomon had appeared in the kitchen, and Hudson made him go out and man the water pump. Before long there were buckets and troughs of water up on the top floor, and by all the windows on the south-west side. Albion had prepared a station for himself up on the roof, from which he had already stopped the drainpipes and filled the gutters with water. “Luckily the roof’s slate,” he told them. “That’ll help.”
“I’m afraid he’ll get trapped up there,” Abigail confided to Hudson, but he told her, “Don’ you worry, Miss Abigail, I reckon he can look after himself.”
Meanwhile, the fire was coming toward them. The breeze was carrying it in a broad swathe, two blocks wide. Its spread was assisted by the fact that, over the decades, the old Dutch ceramic tiles on the roofs had been replaced with wooden shingles. From the waterfront, it moved up the blocks between Whitehall and Broad Street, and its progress was rapid. By one o’clock, it was less than two blocks away. Half an hour later, looking from the front door along Beaver Street toward Bowling Green, Hudson saw the flames catch the roof of the last house.
A great black cloud was towering over the southern side of the street now, filled with glowing embers. He could hear the embers pattering down on the roofs of houses nearby. A house on the other side of the street was catching fire. The huge roar of the moving furnace was getting louder. Master called down to him to close the door, and he went quickly back inside.
Young Albion was very busy now. The other officers had rigged up a pulley to carry buckets of water up to him. He also had a brush with a long pole with which he could push embers off the roof. As the walls of the house were solidly built of brick, the key was to douse the woodwork and the shutters. With luck, the gutters full of water would put out the embers before they set fire to the eaves, but one of the young men had gone into the attic, with more buckets of water, to try to stop the roof timbers catching fire. Abigail had joined her father at one of the windows. Solomon was still busy at the pump.
“If I give the word,” Master ordered, “everyone must leave the house at once.” Hudson wondered if they would. The young men seemed to be enjoying themselves too much. A message came from Albion that more than half of Beaver Street was already alight.
It was almost two o’clock when flames began to crackle from the house next door. Up on the roof, Albion was exerting himself wildly. Hudson went up to help him. Flames were licking one side of the house. They poured buckets of water on that part of the roof so that the gutter would overflow down that wall. The heat was getting fierce. Albion’s face was streaked with black, and seeing tiny embers in his tangled hair, Hudson poured a bucket of water over his head, and the young man laughed. Below, they