THE BRAVEST DEED I EVER SAW:
An American Fireman
As Told by Mr. Forbes Robertson
By P. G. Wodehouse
V.C. Magazine (May 14, 1903)

The third act of the ninety-eighth performance of "The Light That
Failed" had just come to an end, and Dick Heldar, bearing with 
wonderful
fortitude the fact that he had a few moments before lost his eyesight
under dramatic circumstances, was sitting smoking a cigarette and
waiting for the call-boy to announce the beginning of the fourth and
last act.

"I want you to tell me," I said, "which of all the things you have ever
seen -- it is rather a sweeping question -- impressed you as being the
most courageous, either morally or physically."

Mr. Robertson pondered.

"Well," he said, "of course moral courage is rather a subtle thing. It
would take a good deal longer time than I am afraid I shall be able to
give to the subject to recall the finest instance of moral courage in 
my
experience. And as for physical courage, the civilian has so few
opportunities of seeing it, and what sights he does see are, as a rule,
less striking than those of the battlefield. However --"

"Yes?" I said.

"Well, I once saw a fireman save a girl in a rather curious way. But
then, of course, he was merely doing his duty."

"Not once, nor twice, in our rough island story," I murmured.

"Just so. This happened in America."

"Oh," I said, "Something always seems to militate against the aptness 
of
my best quotations."

"It took place years and years ago. It was an interesting episode for
several reasons. In the first place, it was, as I say, the pluckiest
thing I have ever seen. And then it is a good example of the difference
between the methods of English and American firemen. Also it deserves
notice simply as a gymnastic feat. What happened was this. It was a
pretty big blaze, and the fire had got fairly hold of the house, inside
mostly. The girl was in a third storey room, and when the place got too
hot she climbed out of the window on to the coping of the window of the
room below. And there she was. Well, they hadn't any ladders. All they
had were long iron poles with steps up the side, and a ratchet at the
end with teeth in it. It is rather difficult to describe them exactly.
You want a drawing, really. How long were they? Well, let me see. How
high is this room? Oh, they must have been about fifteen feet long.
Hollow, too, I suppose. And the ratchet at the end about three feet. 
The
man took one of these, swung it over his head with both hands, and
brought it down with a crash through the glass of the first storey
window. The teeth of the ratchet caught on to the sill, and up he went,
carrying two more of the poles with him. Yes, they must have been
hollow, or they would have been too heavy. When he got on to the sill 
of
the first storey window he took one of the poles and smashed it through
the window above, where it caught on to the sill as before. He sent it
through a top pane and then dragged it down through the glass till it
caught. That was the window with the coping on which the girl was
sitting. He climbed up the second pole on to the next sill, and then
repeated the smashing process with the last pole. That fixed itself in
the third storey sill, which was about two -- no, three -- feet above
the girl's head. So now he had a sort of ladder in three parts, each
part hanging from a window-sill. He swarmed up the last section, held 
on
with his right hand while he seized the girl with his left, and finally
came down the three poles, still using only his right hand. It was a
most extraordinary thing to watch. It was a wonderful feat of strength,
too, for the double weight must have been a tremendous strain on his 
one
arm. But he got down all right, and saved the girl."

"That was good," I said. And I wished the hero of the adventure had 
been
an Englishman. But I consoled myself by remembering that the records of
the English fire brigades contain many cases equally fine. Whether he
work in New York or London, there is never much wrong in the matter of
courage with the man in the brass helmet.

"What sort of building was it?" I asked. "A skyscraper?"

"Oh, no! Just an ordinary private house. It was in Fifth Avenue."

"I saw another plucky performance," said Mr. Forbes Robertson after a
pause. "It happened in France this time, and, like the fire episode, a
great many years back. It was not quite so sensational as the fire
affair, and the danger averted was not so close as in that case, but
there would certainly have been a very nasty accident if it had not
happened; and the man who did the thing did not belong, like the
fireman, to a class from which one expects courage as a matter of
course. He was a French priest, and what he did was to stop a great big
country horse, which was running away with a heavy cart behind it. It
was just outside Rouen. The man was a friend of mine. We were stopping
at the same place. I was walking to Rouen one day; I was just coming up
a lane leading into the high road, when the horse and cart dashed 
across
the top of it along the high road in the direction of Rouen. When I got
out of the lane I saw my friend coming towards me. The cart was between
us. He stood in the middle of the road and jumped at the horse's mouth
as it was passing. He was a strong man. Not young, about fifty. He was
rather badly knocked about, but he stopped the cart, and we walked home
together. Nobody was in any actual danger at the moment, but the 
streets
a little way on were full, and there were children about, so that it 
was
a good thing that the cart went no further."

I thought so too. I asked where the driver had been all the time. He 
had
dismounted to refresh himself. Voilą comment des accidents arrivent. I
rather wavered in my allegiance to the fireman after this story.
Stopping runaway horses is child's play in fiction. The hero does it
with one hand, and says, "Don't mention it," when thanked. But in real
life it is an operation that takes some doing, and I was conscious of a
very solid respect for that French priest.

But at this moment somebody came up and spoke to Mr. Forbes Robertson,
and I gathered that the time had come for him to be Dick Heldar once
more. He disappeared, and a minute afterwards the sound of a chorus 
made
itself heard from the depths of the earth:

When we go, go, go away from here,
Our creditors will weep and they will wail,
Our absence much regretting
When they find that we've been getting
Out of England by next Tuesday's Indian mail.

The fourth act had begun, and I came away.
.


THE BRAVEST DEED I EVER SAW:
Two Stories of Billy Ballantyne
As Told by Mr. Frank T. Ballen
By P. G. Wodehouse
V.C. Magazine (May 21, 1903)

There is a man who for more than twenty years has known the sea and the
men who go down to it in ships. He made his first voyage when he was
thirteen, and was wrecked on that voyage. He has served as A. B. and as
mate. He knows the merchant vessel from end to end, a merchant sailor
through and through.

"It is a man's life," he said, in answer to a question, "but it is not
the life I should choose for a son of mine for it takes all the finer
edge off a man's character. You have fifteen men cooped up in a room 
the
size of this" -- we were in Mr. Ballen's den -- "many of them the scum
of the earth and you live with them always. You can't get away from
them. I know no greater hardship than that. But sea life does one thing
for a man -- it gives him presence of mind. He does the most 
magnificent
actions on the spur of the moment without a second thought. It is a 
very
curious thing -- the whole point of view is shifted. Nothing has
changed. We used to talk on the same trivial subjects and live in much
the same sort of way. The man with a strain of weakness in him would
knuckle under to the bully just as in the world outside. And then
something would happen to call for what would seem to most people an 
act
of extraordinary bravery, and the act would be done. It was all in a
day's work.

"But the finest thing I have ever seen? Directly you asked me that, my
mind went at once to one episode. I shall never forget it.

"We were at Port Chalmers, the port of Dunedin in New Zealand. There
were five ships there. One of our men, Ballantyne -- Billy Ballantyne 
--
was a chum of a man on the Duke of Argyll, a huge fellow, over six feet
high. Billy was as short as the other was tall, not an inch over five
feet, but very broad and muscular. These two fellows went ashore one
afternoon together, and in the evening we saw them coming back along 
the
wharf. Billy was not stone sober, but he knew what he was doing. The
other man was perfectly drunk. I could see that Billy was doing all he
knew to steer him, and they were tacking from side to side all over the
wharf. Well, at last Billy managed to get him to his own ship, and saw
him to his bunk. Then he came back to us. He was very depressed. I 
think
the liquor was beginning to work. 'I'm done up,' he said. 'I've had an
awful time with --------., keeping him out of the way of Old Coffee.'
Coffee was the policeman. Of course, the man would have got forty-eight
hours for being drunk. 'For two pins,' said Billy, 'I'd go on shore
again and get blind.' 'No! Don't do that, Billy,' I said; 'you go and
lie down.' We were still talking -- we were out on deck at the time --
when we heard shouts above us. We looked up, and there was the drunken
man. He had got out of his ship, and was trying to walk the gangway 
that
joined us to the wharf. He was swaying about, and, as we looked, down 
he
went between us and the side of the wharf. Billy was off like a flash. 
A
second before he had seemed dull and half-asleep, but directly the man
fell he was at the side in an instant. It seemed to me that he flung
himself over the side, but what he really did was to catch hold of the
fender and climb down. Try to imagine it! The space between the wharf
and the side of the ship was not much more than a yard. It was
pitch-black -- as black as the mouth of a coal mine -- and the tide
raced through like a mill-stream, and all the side of the wharf was
encrusted in seaweeds. We lowered ropes, and waited. We could hear them
cursing and swearing and lashing the water about. And then the noise
stopped. About ten minutes afterwards up came Billy's voice from the
darkness: 'Aren't any of you going to heave us a rope?' We were up
pretty quick at that. 'There's plenty of ropes, Billy,' we sang out.
'They're hanging all over the side.' He managed to get hold of one, and
-- how he did I have never been able to make out, for there was nothing
to hold on to while he was doing it -- he rigged a bowline round his
huge chum's waist, and we hauled him up. When we had got him on board,
Billy caught hold of another rope, and came up it hand over hand. The
first thing he did when he reached the deck was to go to where his chum
was lying -- he was full of water, of course -- and roll him about and
bring him to. When he had done that, he saw him safely to his ship. 
Then
he came back, went to his bunk, and turned in as if nothing had
happened. I shall never forget that.

"My heroes," he added reminiscently, "are all of the commonplace type,
whose deeds get no V.C. I saw this same man, Ballantyne, save another
life some time afterwards. There was a boy called Jim Riley on board,
the sort of boy who had no business at sea at all. He was subject to
epileptic fits. He and Billy were aloft on the yards, a hundred and
twenty feet from the deck, when Riley was taken with one of these fits.
He simply collapsed off the yard like a sack. Billy got a grip of a 
rope
with one hand, caught Riley with the other as he was falling, and 
slowly
hauled him up beside him. He was a heavy boy, too.

"I saw Billy last about three years ago, when I was in Aberdeen. He 
lost
an arm, and had to get a job as a porter at Aberdeen Station. Billy's
chum on our ship is a skipper now. Unfortunately, courage by itself 
will
not lift a man. But Billy was splendid -- the very best type of man in
his own rough-and-tumble world. No thought of self whatever. Always
ready to do a good turn for a friend at any risk and inconvenience to
himself."

"I suppose, really, the merchant service is full of men like that?"

"There are a great many of them. But, on some ships, if a man does
anything on his own initiative, he gets reprimanded by those above him.
'Why did you do that?' 'I thought it would be a good thing.' 'What
business have you to think? I am paid to do the thinking here.' That
sort of thing is deadly. It destroys a man's character. That type of
mate is usually the man who is conscious of having very little dignity,
and who wishes to conceal the fact.

"A merchant service training, I find, gives one presence of mind, but 
it
does not cure one of the nervousness caused by delay and anticipation.
When I lecture, for example, I am never nervous on the platform. But if
I have to wait for a quarter of an hour beforehand, with nobody to 
speak
to, I get quite unstrung. Now, on a ship that feeling is at its worst.
Take the case of a second mate, new to his post, and very anxious to do
nothing wrong. He sees a black cloud coming up. Well, it may mean 
either
rain or wind. If he furls sail, and only rain comes, the captain is
sarcastic, and asks him if he is afraid of every cloud he sees. If he
carries on, and the cloud brings wind, and the wind does damage which
might have been prevented, the captain accuses him of having been
asleep. But, mind you, directly the wind does come, he is himself again
at once, and ready to do just as much as it is possible for a man to 
do,
and to do it just as well as it can be done. It is the waiting that is
the worst."