Black Fire by Robert Graysmith Page A

That single note gave them hope, though not much. “The fire engines the city possesses,” people knew, “are of no more use than an old maid’s teapot.”
    As sixty hard-drinking roughhousers, heaving and chanting, rocked to and fro at the handles of the hand-pumper and extinguished two small brush fires, they knew another city-destroying blaze must happen as surely as the sun now rising over the flimsy structures. Charlie Robinson, most famous of all San Francisco torch boys, nearly broke his neck on such a treacherous street. Born in East Monmouth, Maine, he had grown up in a two-story gabled frame house at Number Nine Calhoun Street on Windmill Hill. Perched on a white picket fence across from the house where Hudson, the coffee and tea merchant, ground his spices, Charlie drew fine views of the bay. At age seven, he took painting lessons from the artist Charles C. Nahl. Threats of criminal reprisals forced Charlie’s father, Doc Robinson, a theatrical producer-playwright, to flee San Francisco. He left Charlie and his mother without any means of support, so the boy began running for Big Six. Torch boys might attach themselves to their favorite firehouse, but when there was a fire, they observed strict neutrality. “If no torches were to be had in the Monumental’s house,” Charlie said, “I would run for St. Francisco Hook and Ladder [on Dupont Avenue], Germans, or for Lafayette Hose, the Frenchies.” One night he ran for Vigilant Engine Number Nine out of their two-story fireproof brick firehouse on Stockton Street. He and a band of torch boys lighted the way for Nine’s New York side lever and searched for nails on the board road. “There was a night fire in North Beach,” he recalled. “Three of us were running with the engines. The first boy darted ahead and suddenly we saw his light disappear.I was next.” In the next instant Charlie’s torch flew out of his hand, the pockmarked ground whirled around him, and he was swallowed up. He felt blindly in the blackness. Mud and water were on both sides of him. The other boy lay under him, motionless yet breathing. His brand, balanced high above, cast down enough light for him to evaluate their predicament. They were lying at the bottom of an enormous pit. Another boy fell on top of them. “When the men with the engine saw two lights disappear and then a third, they knew something must have happened. A big hole that none of us knew about had been dug that day right in the middle of the street.” Charlie heard the volunteers swearing, a piercing screech of metal, and the double squeal of brakes. If that gleaming two-thousand-pound water engine should plunge into the hole on top of them … He braced himself. A sudden lurch and the tips of hobnailed boots peeked over the edge. His chief’s hand shot down and pulled the boys up. “Let’s get going,” he said and they did.
    “The arsonist hadn’t struck since the end of January,” Sawyer recalled. “We were all on edge in those days and still woefully unprepared.” The Alta wrote, “One of the most desperate scoundrels of England who have been serving the Queen set a fire above Washington Street.” Three other small fires followed, but none got out of hand. Everyone knew the inexperienced volunteer fire companies had no equipment and excelled more at socializing than putting out city-destroying fires. “Pride comes before the fall,” and pride was about all the three fledgling companies had. The arsonist counted on that.
    At sunset the northwest wind, which had been blowing furiously through gullies and rushing down hills since breakfast, faltered. At ebb tide it died away completely. A deadly chill set in. According to locals the abandoned ships in the shallow cove were so saturated with ghosts their planks and sails were haunted. As proof they told the story of a runaway vessel from the fleet that rode the night fog at the Golden Gate and of a sloop lost in the towering reeds and swamp grass of