Within An Inch Of Death

Narrow Escape of a Chile Who Was Run Down by a Fire Engine

One of those moments that come into the life of every driver of a fire engine, when the prospect of snuffing out the life of a child confronts him, came to Michael Martin of engine No. 15 in New York a few days ago. Right in front of his plunging horses stood a wee mite of five, a piece of cake in her chubby right fist, her big brown eyes dilated with terror. To have swerved would have meant to crash into a crowd on the sidewalk and swing the wheels of the engine against the child. One course was open to Martin, and he took it. He ran over the little one.

With tears streaming from his eyes he kept on to the corner from which the alarm had come, only to find that it was false. He drove back at breakneck speed to the corner, where a surging mob surrounded a drug store. Leaping from his seat, Martin rushed in to find the little girl he had run over sitting on the counter, white and shaky, but uninjured save for a slight cut on the head.

The revulsion of feeling almost overcame the big fireman. He has expected to find a mangled corpse and the maledictions of the crowd. He found instead the greeting that is given a hero, for those who had seen the accident comprehended that he had taken the one chance open to him.

It so happened that at the moment an alarm came five-year-old Sarah Edelman had concluded negotiations for a chunk of cake in a bakery across the street from her home, and it so happened that as she started across the street with the cake she was so engrossed with the flavor of the first bite that she did not notice the engine bearing down upon her.

The shouting, the clanging of bells, the pounding of the hoofs of the horses reached her ears and froze her in her tracks. She stood gazing at the approaching horses. To stop the team was impossible. To swerve meant certain death to women and children who were gazing with the fascination of horror at the tiny figure in the middle of the street.

It was up to Michael Martin to do the quickest thinking of his life. He knew that if he could so direct his team that the child would fall prone between the horses their would not touch her; he knew that if she would lie still the fire box of the engine was far enough removed from the surface of the street to clear her body and that she would be safe from the wheels. 

With a cry that had all his soul in it he reached far out and steadied his horses. The child heard that terrible cry, and she went down as though shot. Martin's eyes saw a patch of white between his horses, saw the patch of white disappear under his engine and heard the scream of horror from the engineer on the back step. But he could not stop, for the place for his engine was at the fire. 

The crowd rushed out and picked up the child. She was unconscious. Blood was streaming down her face and staining the pulpy piece of cake she held in her hand. A man carried her into the drug store, where the skilled man of medicine examined her.

No bones were broken, and in a few moments she opened her eyes. Then she began to cry. A call was sent for an ambulance, and the doctor put court plaster on the cut in Sarah Edelman's head and announced that there was not another bruise on her. 

When Michael Martin came back from response to the false alarm the crowd cheered him. But the foreman of the engine house excused him from duty for the rest of the day.