By SIDNEY V OGLER
RALPH BURNHAM closed the novel he had been reading in the air-raid shelter and looked at his watch. It was half-past ten; time to turn in. He yawned, stretching his arms, and looked round the room. Ellen, the little maid from num- ber I t, was already in bed. Mrs. Schwartz, the plump, good- natured Jewess from number 9, was making-up hers. Mrs. Day was asleep in the big double iron bed, her elderly husband beside her, reading a novelette. The shelter was a large semi- basement room, formerly part of the housekeeper's living- quarters, below the five-storeyed block of flats where the shelterers lived.
Ralph proceeded to make-up his camp-bed, which stood in a snug corner of the shelter below the foot of the Days' bed. When he had finished he removed his jacket, collar and tie, and slippers. He was about to get into the bed when he heard a noise which sounded like the tick of a big clock. " Tick- tack-tick," followed by the drone of an aeroplane and the rolling crash of the big A.A. gun. Mrs. Schwartz sat up. " What was that noise? " she asked. " It must be incendiaries. Mr. Burnham, you should go and see. I'm sure it's in- cendiaries." Ralph looked at her, smiling uncertainly.
" Go on," she said, decisively, urging him. " Have a look out. It's incendiaries."
Ralph wondered how she could be so certain. " I don't think it was anything. Perhaps some shrapnel," he said. He put on his jacket, slippers, and the steel helmet he had brought down with him, and walked gingerly to the door. He opened it, pulled aside the felt curtains just outside, and looked cautiously round, peering up the ramp which led to the street. " There's nothing here," he called, listening nervously to the drone of an aeroplane. He was about to return when a small man, wearing a steel helmet, ran suddenly down the ramp. " Got a stirrup- pump here? " he shouted. " There's a fire across the way." "Stirrup-pump," repeated Ralph. " Yes," he cried, galvanised into life. " It's just here." Luckily one of the residents had shown him where it was kept the night before. " And here's a bucket of sand. Catch hold."
In a moment Ralph found himself half-running up the ramp into the street, the sand-bucket held between them, the stranger holding the stirrup-pump. They turned left, stumbling in the darkness. People flocked along the street, like shadows, call- ing, "Fire! fire! with cheerful voices. They turned into thz High St-eet, which looked as if it were the scene of a firework display. An incendiary bomb lay in the road, expiring in blue flames. Over the rooftops at one end of the street a golden shower illuminated the sky. The street looked festive, beautiful and exciting. " Half-a-mo," Ralph cried. He seized the sand- bucket. and with gusto emptied half its contents over the fire- bomb in the road.
" No need to have done that," said the stranger, " it was burning oue, Ralph knew he was right, but resented the prosy reasoning. His action had been prompted by a welter of romantic notions. lie had heard of incendiaries, had been told what to do with incendiaries, had been given " tips " about dealing with them. But he had neVer seen one. Brown, Jones and Robinson at the office,-e, staid family men, had told casually about the way in which they had calmly put out incendiaries, as if it were a normal duty. Ralph had asked himself, What would I have done in their place? Here he was, in their place, and he had
done its He, too, would talk abiaut it casually the next Morning. But he -would justify himself for wasting time over a dying incendiary. '‘ The Jerries might have used it as a target."
They crossed the high Street and entered a small courtway. The fire was here, in a room on the second-floor of a three- storey block of workers' dwellings. People stood in the court- way, looking up and talking noisily. By the light of their torches Ralph saw a stout, blonde woman, who looked like a barmaid, ringed by a group of people. In a lull in the noise he heard her exclaim plaintively, " Save my parrot Save my parrot."
Ralph ran up a narrow, twisting flight of stairs. People passed him, coming down. He had lost the stranger. He reached the second-floor landing, where he found his companion pump- ing vigorously at the stirrup-pump. Ralph could not see where the fire was; smoke poured acridly across the landing, making him cough and choke. I can't stand this, he told himself, and turned to run down the stairs. He was suddenly conscious of his situation. He, Ralph Burnham, who had never before put his life in jeopardy, to be here, in the midst of a fire which might suddenly trap and devour him. Worse than that, an air-raid was actually going on. Why, at this very moment, a bomb might drop and blow him to bits. The idea impinged on his mind starkly; the idea of death and himself so closely associated. Panic threatened to overwhelm him. . . .
" Water! More buckets! " a voice called from the burning room. ;The cry steadied Ralph, but the smoke prevented him from acting. Suddenly he remembered films he had seen. He dashed his handkerchief into a bucket of water, squeezed it out, and tied it round his mouth. Ah, that was better! How cool the wet handkerchief felt. He was soon the head of a chain of men who were passing pails of water up the stairs. He stood behind the stranger and replenished his water-supply. "Here, take over," the man panted. Ralph began pumping briskly. In a couple of minutes he, too, was sweating, and thankfully relinquished the pump to other hands. Water slopped on the landing and down the stairs. He felt it seeping through his flimsy slippers, striking clammily at the soles of his feet. Voices called, " How's it going? " Men and women made a continual clatter up, and down the stairs. Ralph regarded them with surprise. How coolly they moved; laughing, shouting, as if they were romping together.
" See if the top floor's burning," a man said. Ralph stumbled up the dark stairs and knocked at a door. I'm a fool to come up so high, he thought. But the thought came from his mind, not from the dark sources in which panic lurked. " Come in," called a rough voice. He opened the door. An elderly workman sat there in his Shirt sleeves. " Any fire here? " Ralph asked, astonished at the man's stolidity. " Nab," the man said, derisively. Ralph shut the door and went downstairs. The fire was out. He recovered his pump, and joined the noisy troop leaving the building. Outside, in the courtyard, a tall, broad-shouldered man was holding aloft a big, wire bird- cage. "Here's yer parrot, girl," he shouted jovially.
After recounting his experience to the others he got into bed. He lay in the darkness, musing over his adventure, almost unaware of the crashing guns and the threatening drone of the aeroplanes. He felt slightly exhausted, but happy. He remembered how, as a child in the last war, his parents had hurried him to a large East End shelter during air-raids. As soon as the maroons had sounded his father and mother had pulled their four children from their beds, and they had run for Nearly a mile to the shelter, along a dark main road. They an blindly with a stream of frightened people, filling the road like refugees fleeing from an approaching enemy. Once he had lost a shoe; he could still remember the fee; of the mud sucking through his sock as he pattered beside his parents. they ran as if wolves pursued them. Terror hung over them, leaning like a colossal eagle from the skies. Terror filled his pounding heart, made leaden his infant limbs. But worse than terror was his childish unawareness of the evil thing that made grown people flee like this in panic. If his parents ran from it like this, what chance had a child against it?
Tonight he knew. That was the reason for his happiness. Tonight he had put that terror into perspective. It was not from terror he must flee, but from the minds of those who • magnified its power to subdue them.
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