It was only a few yards from the door of the house to the corner of Broad Street. Turning down Broad Street, he went swiftly toward the waterfront. The wind was blowing briskly in across the East River from Brooklyn, and he felt it in his face. At the Dock Street crossing, he saw the fire. It was at the far end of the street where it met Whitehall. He could see that the Fighting Cocks Tavern was already a mass of flame, and the fire seemed to be spreading fast. He wondered how it could have happened so quickly. People from the area were standing and staring, but almost all the firemen, being Patriots, had fled the city, so nobody was doing anything. The house beside the tavern was already well ablaze. Just south of the tavern, a small warehouse suddenly began to burn.

He frowned. That was odd. The wind was blowing the other way.

Then he noticed something.

By the time Hudson got home, the blaze had spread over a whole block. He found Master and the rest of the household already up. “Breeze’ll bring it this way, Boss,” he announced, “an’ there’s no firemen.”

“Not much we can do, then,” said Master grimly.

But that was when young Mr. Albion spoke up.

“I think, sir,” he said, “we could try.”

When Mr. Albion had first arrived at the house, the Boss had been quick to see his opportunity. Within a day, he had Albion and two other young officers quartered there. “Mr. Albion’s our personal friend, Hudson,” he’d explained. “And I’d rather house some junior officers here as guests, than have to move out for some colonel.” Undoubtedly young Mr. Albion seemed very gentlemanly, and the two other officers gave no trouble.

That night, certainly, they were splendid. In no time they had the household filling every available container with water. Solomon had appeared in the kitchen, and Hudson made him go out and man the water pump. Before long there were buckets and troughs of water up on the top floor, and by all the windows on the south-west side. Albion had prepared a station for himself up on the roof, from which he had already stopped the drainpipes and filled the gutters with water. “Luckily the roof’s slate,” he told them. “That’ll help.”

“I’m afraid he’ll get trapped up there,” Abigail confided to Hudson, but he told her, “Don’ you worry, Miss Abigail, I reckon he can look after himself.”