"Indeed, Delancey, I am not at all ready to make an intimate
acquaintance with the 'Pot,' or 'Frying Pan,'" again exclaimed the
lawyer fireman.

Still, Hal insisted upon following, in hopes the stranger would tack
about.

"You have no fears?" said Hal, to his brother fireman, the merchant.

"Why no," he returned, calculatingly; "that is, if the risk is not too
great."

Now the waters became wilder, lashing against the rocks, leaping and
foaming; it was a dangerous thing to venture much farther, they must
turn back now or not at all; a few strokes more and they must keep on
steadily through the gate--one false movement would be their
destruction. The stranger's bark gradually distanced them--they saw it
enter among the whirling eddies--he missed the sound of their measured
strokes, glanced back, lost the balance of his oars, his boat upset, and
Hal saw neither no more. There, on that moonless, starless night, when
the darkness was blackest, just before the dawn, the brave fireman had
gone down in that whistling, groaning, shrieking, moaning, Tartarean
whirlpool! Mute horror stood on every face. Hal's grasp slackened; the
lawyer quickly seized the oars, and turned the boat's prow towards the
city.

"Do you not think we could save him?" gasped Hal, his face like the face
of the dead.