CAPTAIN KODAK

(See page 269.)
“‘I’m all right!’ shouted McConnell.”

CAPTAIN KODAK

A CAMERA STORY

By

Alexander Black

Author of “Miss Jerry,” “Miss

America,” “The Story of Ohio,”

etc. · · · · · · · · ·

With Photographic

Illustrations by the

Author · · · ·

BOSTON

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1899,

BY

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY

THIRD EDITION

Plimpton Press

H. M. PLIMPTON & CO., PRINTERS & BINDERS,

NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.

To My Boys

CARL AND MALCOLM

A WORD AT THE

BEGINNING

IN the olden days people peered about in the world for the fountain of perpetual youth. Nowadays they are wiser. They find a hobby—an enthusiasm, by which the old are made young and the young are made wise and happy. This is the story of the camera hobby; of an amateur photographer and his chums; of a boy’s adventures in the company of his camera; of a camera club and the old and young brought together by the influence of a common interest; of journeys in search of the picturesque; of problems, struggles, and surprises. The pictures are not by any means always intended to show my readers how photographs should be made, but rather to suggest the interest of familiar and accessible things, and that the best thing about a photograph is not always the thing we wished or expected to put in it. For assistance in the form of pictures at the Montauk camp I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Walter Hammitt.

A. B.

CONTENTS

CAPTAIN KODAK.

I.
THE COMING OF THE CAMERA.

ON the day when the circus came to Hazenfield; one of the elephants broke loose and strolled up Main Street; and when they chased him he knocked down three lamp-posts, the stone boy on the drinking-fountain, upset a trolley car, broke the insurance company’s sign, smashed the helmet of Policeman Ryan, and fell into a hole in front of the barber’s.

There never had been so much excitement in Hazenfield, and the motorman, Policeman Ryan, and the barber hope there never will be again.

When it was all over, that is to say, when they got the elephant out of the hole, which you must know was no easy matter, and Hazenfield had quieted down again, there were many comments on the incident.

“I never expected an elephant,” said the motorman.

“I’m glad it wasn’t your head,” said Policeman Ryan’s wife, when she saw the helmet.

“I thought he was coming in to get shaved!” said the barber.

Allan Hartel, the Doctor’s son, said, “If I’d only had a camera!”

Allan recalled how Main Street cleared, or tried to clear, when the elephant was first discovered; and the way the elephant swung his trunk, and dropped into a hobbling trot before he struck the trolley car. He recalled the frantic movement of the motorman as he caught sight of the big, lumbering beast at the corner.

“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the brave way that Policeman Ryan stepped out into the street, waving his club, and the way he dodged when the elephant swung at him with his trunk.

“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the way the elephant dropped on his knees in the hole. He recalled the funny wrinkling of the elephant’s hind legs as if he had on a pair of trousers that were too large for him. “If I’d only had a camera!”

I suppose that the way he felt about this elephant affair had a good deal to do with the fact that after that Allan always liked so much to photograph elephants. But I must not get ahead of my story.

To properly go on with the story I must tell you that about six weeks after the elephant got himself in a hole, and the circus people, with derrick and tackle, got him out again (you never saw an elephant more truly ashamed of himself than that elephant), Little McConnell saw Allan Hartel come out of the express office with a package.

Now you, reader, will guess at once that this was a camera, but McConnell had no suspicion of this fact.

“Hello!” called McConnell, “what have you got there?”

McConnell was thirteen, two years younger than Allan. He was called Little McConnell to distinguish him from his brother, who was called Big McConnell. It would be hard to say why no one ever called him Percy—his first name. Even Allan always called him simply McConnell. He was the kind of boy, somehow, that you always call by his last name and never know why.

McConnell and Allan had been chums for a long time, and McConnell certainly should have known what was in the bundle had he not been up to Greenby visiting his aunt for two weeks, and had not Allan kept a certain little enterprise a secret from everybody before that. But when Allan said, “Guess,” he was much puzzled for a moment. Then he made the most successful guess he ever had made in his life.

“Not a camera?” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” admitted Allan.

“When did you buy it?” McConnell felt as if he must have been left out of Allan’s confidence somehow.

“I didn’t buy it,” Allan replied.

“Then who gave it to you—your father?”

“It wasn’t given to me,” returned Allan.

“Well,” said McConnell, a little annoyed, “that is just a trick. You’d have to buy it or have it given to you—wouldn’t you?”

“No,” said Allan; “there’s another way.” “Oh, yes—you could find it.”

“Then there is still another way,” Allan insisted.

“You don’t mean to steal it, do you?”

“No,” said Allan; “there is one other way.”

“I give it up,” said McConnell. “That conundrum beats me,” and he went over the thing on his fingers: “buy it, have it given to you, find it, steal it,—what else is there?”

“Win it,” said Allan.

McConnell laughed. “Cheney says ‘win’ when he means steal.”

“I can’t help that,” insisted Allan; “I did win it.”

“How? What was the game?”

“It wasn’t a game. I wrote a composition. There were a lot of prizes. One of them was a camera.”

“You always were lucky,” said McConnell. Then to show that he wasn’t envious, he added: “I’m glad you did win it. I was thinking the other day that everybody seemed to have a camera except us. Is it a ‘press the button’?”

“It’s both. You can press the button or stand it on legs, either one. It hasn’t any legs, now. They come separately. I don’t believe I’ll care much for them. I can rest it on something.”

“Yes,” McConnell assented; “when they’re on legs they sometimes get broken when some one kicks against one of the legs. Let’s see, what is it they call the legs?”

“Do you mean tripod?”

“Yes, that’s it, tripod. I wonder why it isn’t triped,” mused McConnell, as they continued their walk toward Allan’s house. “We say biped and quadruped for two legs and four legs.”

“McConnell and Allan had been chums for a long time.”

Allan could not explain; and he was thinking about the camera. “Don’t you want to help me fix up a dark-room out in the stable?”

“That’s just what I do want,” exclaimed McConnell. “I want to learn the ropes. You see, I think that when Bill hears about your having a camera he’ll help me to get one somehow. It seems to me,” McConnell continued enthusiastically, “I’d almost swap my wheel for one!”

Allan was thinking about the dark-room. “Jo Bassett has his in the kitchen. I mean he develops there at night, and Owen has his in the attic. I wanted father to let me have the little place by his office, you know, where all the bottles are, but he said, No, sir! I’d have to doctor my plates where he wasn’t doctoring his patients, for he didn’t want either the plates or the patients to get the wrong doses.”

The boys laughed.

“Is the stuff dangerous that they put on the plates?” asked McConnell.

“I guess not,” answered Allan, “unless you drink it. Father says there are two sides to a person, the inside and the outside, and he says we mustn’t use things on the wrong side. He’s going to help me about the bottles.”

“But you must take the pictures first,” said McConnell. He was impatient to see the camera, and to have it aimed at something. “Couldn’t we—couldn’t you take something to-day?”

“It’s too late now,” said Allan, regretfully. “We need a lot of light, and there’s scarcely any left. But we’ll get everything ready, so far as we can, for to-morrow.” When they reached Allan’s house the Doctor was just getting into his carriage at the door. “Hello!” he called; “so it has come, Allan?”

“Yes, sir,” and Allan swung his package in the air.

“Good!” exclaimed the Doctor. “I shall want to see it when I get back.”

The boys made short work of the bundle when they reached indoors. Wrapped in strong paper and nestling in “excelsior” was the shiny, leather-covered box, with holes, and buttons, and levers, and gauges,—a mysterious box, which the boys proceeded to examine from its six sides with great reverence.

With the aid of the printed instructions, and what knowledge the boys had acquired from seeing other Hazenfield cameras (especially Owen Kent’s), the mysteries began one by one to seem less mysterious. It was great fun to watch the images of the room, of the window, of the street, in the little “finder.” “Isn’t the picture going to be any bigger than that?” asked McConnell, in a disappointed tone.

“Oh, yes,” said Allan; “that is only to show where the picture will come on the plate back here. It’s only a miniature of the real picture.” “And it isn’t upside down, either,” remarked McConnell, peering into the little opening at the top of the box.

“Somebody told me,” said Allan, “that was because there was a little piece of looking-glass on the inside that twisted the thing around.”

Presently they found that by opening a lid and looking through the box from the back the real image from the lens fell on the “focussing glass,” this time upside down.

McConnell laughed. “That always seems so funny.” He twisted his head in an effort to get a natural view of the room on the glass. Then he ran across the room and stood on his head against the wall. “Do I look right side up now?” he demanded of Allan.

“Yes,” laughed Allan, peering into the box. “You look right side up, but you don’t look very natural.”

“‘Do I look right side up now?’”

“Suppose you turned the camera upside down,” suggested McConnell, coming back.

Allan laughed again. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good,” and he turned the camera to show McConnell that the picture was still hopelessly inverted.

McConnell thought that he liked the “finder” picture better. “It’s too bad,” he said, “that it isn’t bigger.”

Allan had been reading about cameras. “There are special cameras,” he said, “that have finders on top as large as the focussing glasses at the back.”

McConnell thought that he would like one of that sort.

“What’s the use?” asked Allan. “The little finder tells you just what you are going to get. It’s the picture boiled down—well!” Allan shook the box. “I hope something hasn’t broken already.” A rattling sound came from the inside of the box.

“Maybe it was broken in the express,” ventured McConnell. But investigation proved that the rattling sound was produced by a loose screw under the front cover of the box, which the directions showed was to be used when the camera was placed on legs. Having opened the front of the box to make this investigation, Allan was now able to closely examine the lens.

“That’s the diaphragm,” said Allan, pointing to the disk of metal protruding from the barrel of the lens.

“The what?”

“Diaphragm,” repeated Allan.

“How do you spell it?”

“I don’t think I can spell it. What do you always want to spell things for? It begins with a d-i-a and then gets all mixed up—ho, here it is in the directions, if you must spell it—‘d-i-a-p-h-r-a-g-m.’”

“What does it do?”

Allan was turning the disk. “Look,” he said; and they saw that the diaphragm had three holes in it, and that any one of these holes could be brought opposite the centre of the lens.

“I don’t see how anything could possibly get through that!” exclaimed McConnell, staring at the smallest opening.

“Why,” said Allan, “Owen says you can photograph through a pinhole—with a pinhole, I think he said.”

“He didn’t mean without a lens, did he?” demanded McConnell, incredulously.

“That’s an old trick, McConnell,” said Dr. Hartel in the doorway. “I photographed with a pinhole when I was a lad.”

“You did!” cried Allan. “You never told me about it.”

“I don’t see how the picture ever squeezes through,” said McConnell.

“Light is wonderful,” mused Allan, prying further into the box.

“Everything in nature is wonderful,” said the Doctor, “when you come to know about it. Your lens is wonderful, but not more wonderful than the hole among the leaves of a tree that photographs the sun on the ground underneath. It isn’t any more wonderful than the way the plate catches and keeps the image.”

“The plate!” repeated Allan. “I had forgotten about that! We can’t make pictures unless we have something to make them on.”

“I suppose you can get them at the photographer’s, can’t you?” asked the Doctor, examining the camera.

“Wincher’s stationery store sells cameras,” said McConnell, “and I guess they sell plates too.” Every little matter associated with the camera had an exciting interest for the boys that day. McConnell came around in the evening after Allan had run down to the stationer’s to get a package of plates.

“Open by ruby light only,” read Allan on the box.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “you’ll have to think about your dark-room.”

“The dark-room!” This seemed like one of the most interesting things about the whole affair.

“Though the box might have said, ‘by ruby light or no light,’” replied the Doctor. “There is no objection to your opening it by no light if you want to.”

“But we couldn’t see,” protested McConnell.

“You could feel, though,” the Doctor explained. “An old photographer told me that he always preferred to load his plate-holders in the dark. He trusted his touch with no light more than he did with a weak red light with which he sometimes let his eyes deceive him.”

“Deceive him how?” asked Allan.

“By letting him get a plate wrong side up.”

“Oh!” said Allan. He hadn’t thought to consider that the plates had a right and a wrong side.

“When you come to open your box,”—then the Doctor paused a moment. “Suppose, boys, that we go and load the plate-holders. We’ll go up to your room, Allan.”

“But how about the ruby light?”

“Oh, we shall soon fix that. Where is your bicycle lamp?”

Allan fetched the well-worn headlight of his wheel, and when it was lighted, the boys remarked that the side glasses were a rich red.

“But what shall we do with the front glass?” and Allan struggled to think of some way to color the front glass.

“Wait a moment,” said the Doctor. “You will get a regular ruby lamp if you need one, but I think I can show you an emergency method of using any lamp of this sort.” He found a piece of reddish powder-wrapper in his chemical closet, and this he fastened over the front of the lantern; then taking a larger sheet of manila paper he made a cylinder of this about the size of an ordinary Chinese lantern.

“That,” he said, “is a safety shield to keep out any rays of white light that may escape from any of these smaller ventilating holes of the lamp.” The Doctor placed the lamp inside the shield. “Yellow paper is the next best shield to red. They got along with yellow light when photographic plates were less sensitive. Now they often use both yellow and red glass in combination. Well, I guess we are ready to load up.”

Allan led the procession up to his room, carrying the plate-holders—there were four of these—and the lamp. McConnell came next with the manila paper shield, and the Doctor followed in the rear with the box of plates. On the way the procession met Mrs. Hartel who had been putting little Ellen to bed.

“What is this strange procession?” she cried.

“This is the kodak contingent,” laughed the Doctor; “a company of kodakers just going into camp.”

“And you, Allan, are you the captain?” asked Mrs. Hartel.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied for him, “he is the captain—Captain Kodak; that is quite a good name for him now.”

“Well,” Mrs. Hartel called after them, “I hope you will always preserve good order in your camps—and especially great cleanliness. You know what I mean by that, Harry,” Mrs. Hartel said to the Doctor. “I don’t want any chemicals on the bed-spread.”

“Oh, we’re going out to the stable to do that,” Allan called back.

“To do what?—put chemicals on the bed-spread?”

“No, no!” expostulated Allan, at the door of his room,—“I mean to use the chemicals.”

They cleared a little table in Allan’s room and placed the lamp in the centre of it, with the yellow paper shield in position. A soft, yellowish light filled the room and made the three faces look strangely unusual.

“This makes me think of a conspiracy,” said Allan.

“Or three robbers in a cave,” said McConnell.

“Now, you understand, boys, that I don’t really know very much about photography,” said the Doctor. “When I was studying medicine I had a room-mate who was a photographic crank, and I once saw him do something of this sort, though he used a small stable lantern with a red bandanna handkerchief tied about it. This ought to be much safer, and it needs to be, for plates are much more sensitive, even to red and yellow light, than they used to be. I suppose that some day they will make photographic plates so sensitive that we shall have to develop them absolutely in the dark.”

“That would be harder than loading them in the dark, wouldn’t it?”

“Decidedly harder. Now, boys, let us get out the plates. Probably I shall do something that I shouldn’t do, and you will learn afterward not to do it. But I am better than no help at all, am I not?” the Doctor added laughingly.

“Yes, indeed!” Allan admitted.

The Doctor had used the point of his knife in cutting through the paper in the bottom of the box. Then they found that the plates were hidden in three boxes, one within the other.

“We must not expose the plates too long even to this faint light,” the Doctor remarked, as he opened one of the plate-holders. Then he took out one of the plates and showed the boys that the plate was coated on one side with a yellowish substance; then, still keeping it in shadow, he let each of the boys feel both surfaces. The coated surface had a smooth feeling.

“The plain glass side feels sticky, doesn’t it?” said McConnell.

“In the dark,” said the Doctor, “you can easily tell the difference, though you should always feel the plates near the margin, because the moisture of the fingers may leave a stain that will afterward appear in the developed plate. My chum once photographed me sitting by the window, and a finger mark which fell on my face—that is to say, on which my face fell, for I think the carelessness was before the picture was taken—made me look like a very disreputable citizen indeed. My chum said I looked like a surprised pirate. Now, if you know how a surprised pirate looks, you can fancy my appearance. But usually you won’t need to feel the plates to place them properly, for each maker packs his plates in a certain way. This maker packs them face to face. That, I should judge, is the usual way, now. And here goes for the plate-holders.”

When the plate-holders each had their two plates in position, back to back, the Doctor said it would be well to remember that the four remaining plates in the package must not be confused with the others when the time came for developing or changing plates. But, he added, “I know well enough that you will have to make all these mistakes to know how to avoid them.”

“Did you do that with your prescriptions, father?” asked Allan, with a grin that was not concealed even by the half darkness.

What the Doctor might have answered it is hard to say, for just then Mrs. Hartel knocked at the door to say that Owen had come. In fact, Owen was then at the door.

“Come in,” called the Doctor, the plate-box being safely closed.

“Hello, Owen,” shouted Allan from behind the lantern. “I didn’t go after you because I thought it was your night at the Choral.”

“There wasn’t any meeting to-night,” Owen said, “and I just happened to hear from Cheney that you had a camera. What is it?”

“A Wizard,” said Allan, “and a little beauty. I wish it was daylight. I hate to wait until to-morrow.”

“What kind of a lamp is that?” asked Owen, puzzled by the object on the table.

“That,” replied the Doctor, smiling at the group of boys, “is the famous Hartel Adjustable Lamp.”

Owen saw the joke.

“I suppose we’ll fix up something better in the stable,” said Allan.

“In the stable?” Owen looked interested. “That’s a good idea. Won’t you let me see your Wizard?”

They all trooped downstairs again. “Here come the kodakers!” cried McConnell. There they found Mrs. Hartel and Edith Coles, Allan’s cousin, studying the camera by the sitting-room lamp. Edith was an orphan niece of Mrs. Hartel who had been a member of the Hartel household for six years. She was now of about Allan’s age, and always was much interested in everything that Allan did. Returning from the home of a girl friend where she had been spending the afternoon and early evening, she was as much delighted over the camera as if it were some good fortune of her own.

“‘And is it all loaded and ready?’ asked Edith?”

“I want to be a kodaker, too!” she exclaimed laughingly in response to McConnell’s jubilant announcement.

“I guess Allan will let you join his company,” the Doctor said.

Owen was called upon as the most experienced in new cameras to tell Edith and the rest all about the Wizard; to explain the focussing scale, which Dr. Hartel said Captain Kodak really should call a “range-finder”; to point out features of the shutter, through which the picture could jump in the fraction of a second, or which could be set so that a long exposure might be given when there was not sufficient light for a “snap-shot”; to show the action of the slides in the plate-holders, the use of the diaphragm, and more other things about the camera than you would have supposed could be said about a box so small and innocent looking.

“And is it all loaded and ready?” asked Edith, looking down at Allan and McConnell, who were bending over the camera in some new investigation.

“Yes,” said Allan.

“It is a pity not to be able to try it now in some way.”

“Edith,” remonstrated Mrs. Hartel, “you are always impatient.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, “I guess they all are—I think I am myself. The only difference is that Edith speaks out.”

“You could make a flash light,” Owen suggested. At this moment the clatter of a bell could be heard in the adjacent street and some one ran rapidly past the house.

“A fire!” shouted McConnell.

There was a pause during which every one listened breathlessly. Allan and McConnell were already at the gate. “It is a fire!” Allan reported in a moment, “over by the East Church.”

“There is something to photograph!” exclaimed the Doctor.

“Could I?” cried Allan, with an appealing look to Owen,—“at night?”

“Why, I should think night was a good time to photograph fire,” Edith declared.

“It has been done,” Owen admitted.

“I’ll try it!” Allan caught up the camera. “Won’t you come, Owen, and help?”

They all were at the door in a moment.

“Allan!” called the Doctor. “You’ve forgotten your hat!”

“Be careful where you go,” warned Mrs. Hartel, as she pressed the hat on the boy’s head with a motherly firmness.

II.
THE FIRE.

EDITH at the gate could see the three boys running in the direction of the red light in the sky. Allan, in the lead, was hugging the camera under his arm. There was a sound of many feet, a murmur of excitement in the air, and distant hoarse shouts. A huge roll of black smoke drifted off to the north.

“I believe it’s the factory,” said the Doctor, at Edith’s shoulder. “Let us go too, Edith.”

Edith did not wait for a second invitation. She had been longing to follow the boys, and had hurried upstairs for her hat and was again in the hall before the Doctor had reached for his cane.

“Margaret,” called the Doctor to Mrs. Hartel, “perhaps you wish me to take you.”

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Hartel. “I’m afraid I don’t appreciate the fun of fires. I had rather have all of you tell me about it.”

“We shall!” cried Edith from the walk.

It was as the Doctor expected. Flames had broken out in the southern wing of the factory. The eastern windows on the first floor of the wing showed an orange-red glare that made Edith think of the reflected light on window-panes when the sun is going down. The flames evidently had passed through to the second floor and were creeping eastward, though the dense masses of smoke made it difficult at times to tell precisely what parts of the building were actually burning.

The Hazenfield engines were hard at work. The ground trembled with the thump, thump, thump of the steam pumps, the black figures of the firemen scurried this way and that with many confused shouts, while the inky line of the hose twisted its way to the wing door of the factory.

It was at the wing door that some men were carrying out certain heavy cans which they placed at some distance from the burning building. These men were dripping with the hose water, the light of the flames glittering on their clothes and faces.

“Why don’t they pour the water through the windows?” cried Edith.

“Because they know they can’t save the wing,” replied the Doctor; “they don’t want to increase the draught by breaking the windows before the heat destroys the glass, and they are fighting indoors to keep the flames from spreading to the main building.”

Almost as the Doctor spoke four of the upper story windows blew out, a rush of flame following and mounting high over the roof.

“There!” exclaimed Edith, “they must pour in the water now!”

“Why, you almost seem glad, Edith,” said the Doctor.

“Well,” pleaded Edith, “it seems so foolish not to pour the water where most of the fire is.”

Two streams of water now leaped up to the open windows and sizzled and snorted under the blazing eaves. The flames greeted the serpents of water with a howl of rage and defiance, and fresh clouds of smoke arose at the places where they fought together.

“I wonder where the boys are?” queried Edith.

The Doctor had been wondering the same thing.

In a great circle about the burning factory were the faces of the spectators gleaming in the firelight. The stillness of the crowd was astonishing. The crackle of the flames could be heard with a strange distinctness, and the hoarse voice of the engine foreman sounded clear above all other voices. Only when the window-glass fell out or some other fresh event of this kind happened, did the crowd make a noticeable sound. Then there would be a general murmur running completely around the circle.

If the Doctor and Edith could have seen more distinctly in the uncertain light the embankment to the south of the burning wing, where the crowd was thinnest, they would have discovered Allan and his two companions grouped closely in earnest consultation.

As he had been running to the fire it had seemed very odd and foolish to Allan to be carrying the camera, and when they actually reached the scene of the fire the carrying of the camera seemed even more foolish than before. Yet it certainly made the whole affair seem more like an adventure to have the camera along. It seemed like going armed.

“Phew!” ejaculated McConnell, “it’s going to be a whopper! It’s all blazing inside! Come over here!”

“Let’s go around to where the engines are,” suggested Allan.

“Here’s a good place!” Owen called, pointing to the embankment.

The three boys clambered up the embankment in an excitement which only a fire can call out.

Allan’s first thought was of the camera. “Do you think I might try a snap?” he asked Owen.

“I should try one snap,” Owen suggested, “just as an experiment, and then try one or two seconds’ time.”

Allan fixed his “range-finder,” as Doctor Hartel had called it, for the full distance, which made the focus accurate at fifty feet and beyond.

“Wait a moment!” cried McConnell, “it isn’t blazing high now.”

Allan was locating the factory in his “finder.” Nothing but spots of fire were visible there. McConnell was eager for a glimpse of the little picture.

Presently Allan said, “I guess I’ll snap it now, Owen!” and he pressed the trigger.

“That’ll be great!” McConnell exclaimed.

“Did you draw the slide?” Owen asked.

Allan looked stupid. “No,” he confessed, “I didn’t.” Then he opened the box, drew the slide that hid a plate, set his shutter again, Owen stooped forward to see that the front opening was uncovered, and Allan pressed the trigger once more.

“This time I guess we caught it!” Allan said.

“‘Wait a moment!’ cried McConnell.”

Owen now advised that they rest the camera on a large stone for making the “time exposure,” and he assisted Allan in setting the shutter so that the exposure could be made by opening and closing the sliding front of the box. Each moment the building became more brilliantly lighted. The flames had stolen across the end of the wing from east to west, and when Allan opened the little door for two seconds—McConnell quickly counted five in the same space of time—the main floor was more than half swept by the fire.

The efforts of the firemen to keep the fire in the wing seemed likely to succeed, though they could not have succeeded had there been any wind, particularly had there been a wind from the south. It was exciting to watch the battle between fire and water—the fire leaping blindly hither and thither like a wild beast; the water guided by skilful men who stood at their posts with hats pulled low to keep the blistering heat out of their faces.

While the boys were preparing for a third shot, the flames came streaming through a hole in the roof near the cornice, and fluttered like a great yellow banner thirty or forty feet long.

“Now!” screamed McConnell in great excitement, “there’s a picture for you!”

Allan pressed the trigger, and not a moment too soon, for a stream of water struck the opening in the roof, and the great golden banner of fire shrank rapidly and finally disappeared in clouds of steam and smoke. The boys found it hard to watch the fire and not wish that the firemen would place the streams in some spot they seemed to have overlooked. It was like watching a man paint a fence or hoe a garden. There were places which up to the last moment seemed likely to be forgotten altogether.

This was particularly true of a little river of fire in the cornice which slowly crept along until it seemed on the point of reaching the main building.

“I wonder why they don’t put out that place in the cornice,” Allan said impatiently; “I’m sure they don’t see that.”

Owen and McConnell had both noticed this stealthy movement of the fire.

“I almost feel like going over and telling them,” said McConnell. “If they don’t hurry it’ll surely catch the main roof.”

Then swish! came No. 2 engine’s hose, and the little stream of fire instantly disappeared. “Probably they know what they are about after all,” admitted Allan.

“The spots of fire.”

“The flames came streaming through a hole in the roof.”

Owen laughed. “But I think, McConnell, you ought to go over and give them the advantage of your advice.”

All three were sitting on the edge of the embankment watching the waning fire, when a voice in the darkness called, “Hello, boys!”

It was Dr. Hartel and Edith. “We have been looking for you everywhere,” said the Doctor. “We watched for three boys in a bunch.”

“Yes,” laughed Edith, “there were different size bunches, and when we saw a bunch of three—”

“With a black box,” put in the Doctor.

“—with a black box, we knew it was you.”

“We have made three pictures of the fire,” said Allan.

“You mean three exposures, don’t you, Allan?” the Doctor asked, with his teasing smile. “Better wait until after the developing before talking about pictures.”

“Anyway,” persisted McConnell, “it was aimed right, and I heard it click.”

“And I saw that the front door was open,” laughed Owen.

“And the slide out,” added Allan.

“Of course,” said Owen, “I don’t suppose there will be much on the plates but the flames.”

“It is getting chilly, Edith,” said the Doctor, after a time. “I guess that you and I had better stroll home. They have the thing under control now. Don’t stay too long, boys.”

The Doctor had not gone far when Allan came running after them to say that Owen had suggested using some of his developer for the plates, and that he was to bring his dark-room lamp with him. “We are going to begin up to the coach-house to-night.”

“To-night?” repeated the Doctor.

“Yes,” returned Allan, “it’s only half-past nine, and Owen says we can do it all in an hour.”

And so, after waiting about fifteen minutes longer, until the fire had dwindled to a point at which the fire chief saw only an hour’s work ahead of him before leaving the blackened wing of the factory to the care of the watchman, the boys started for Owen’s and were not long in starting back eagerly for the coach-house.

III.
UNDER THE RED LAMP.

ABOVE the stalls in Dr. Hartel’s stable were three rooms, in one of which a coach-man used to sleep in the days when the place had been used by Judge Solling. The two other rooms were only partly finished. In one of these was a sink with running water, which had long been marked in Allan’s fancy as the focal point of the dark-room.

“We can’t fix anything here to-night,” said Owen.

“Of course not,” admitted Allan.

Owen had carried over two trays, “one for developing and the other for fixing,” and at his suggestion Allan procured an “agate iron” tray from the kitchen to wash the plates in. “Mind you fetch it back!” said Nora.

“Is it dark enough here?” asked Allan, turning to the back windows.

“Yes,” answered Owen; “but in the daytime you would have to cover up the windows in some way, and keep the daylight in the front rooms from getting in around these doors.”

Meanwhile Owen, in the red light of his lamp, was fussing with two bottles, a proceeding which excited the greatest interest on the part of the two other boys. Allan often had seen his father make chemical experiments, and he had seen Owen develop once before; but he was not a photographer then, and had not watched each motion with the same feeling of concern and anticipation.

“I forgot my graduate,” Owen complained.

“Shall I get one of father’s?” asked Allan.

“No, I can guess the amount pretty well in this old glass.”

Owen poured from each of his bottles, and then added water from the tap, inspected the trays critically, and turned the flame of the lamp a little lower. “Now,” he said, “we are all ready.”

“Ship ahoy!” came a voice from the stable stairs. It was the Doctor.

“Can’t we come?” That was Edith.

“Yes, yes! Come right up!” shouted Allan, running to the head of the stairs to pilot the newcomers, “though I don’t know where you are going to sit—we haven’t any chairs.”

“Oh, we shan’t mind that!” said the Doctor.

“We are just ready,” said Owen.

Allan thought it was good of Owen to say “we,” for he himself had taken but small part in the important preparations.

“I hope this won’t make you nervous, Owen,” the Doctor said. “I don’t know that I should want to perform an operation with so many onlookers.”

“I may not do the right thing,” Owen confessed; “but I only know how to do the one thing, anyway, and that is to pour on the developer and let the thing go.”

The Doctor laughed quietly. “I see,” he said, “you administer the medicine and let nature do the rest. After all, that is the about the most any of us can do.”

“Now,” asked Allan, “do you want one of the plates?” He had been standing with the plate-holders in his hand.

“Yes,” Owen answered, “we’re all ready.”

They opened a holder and took out one of the plates. Owen placed the plate in one of the trays, poured his developing mixture over it, and began gently to rock the tray, the spectators crowding about him in a semicircle.

“Of course,” said Owen, “it may be a long time coming up.” Presently he added, “It may be very much under-exposed, you know.”

At the end of five minutes the plate remained obstinately free from any sign of an image.

“I don’t see a thing,” said Edith.

“But, Edith!” expostulated Allan, “it sometimes takes a long while.”

“I think I have done the thing right,” murmured Owen, in perplexity. Then he suddenly turned to Allan. “Say, which one of the plates is this?”

Allan’s face took on a queer look in the red light. “I don’t know,” he answered blankly. It had not occurred to him before. “I know we didn’t double any.”