Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/244

430 "Get up there or I'll pitch you into the street," he said.

Harrison climbed. At the top of the ladder he looked up. Kirk and Ford were reaching down to him. He went one round higher.

"Straighten up—steady now," said Kirk calmly.

Harrison raised himself slowly, and lifted his hands. Just as he felt Kirk's fingers he gave way and swayed against the wall, Kirk gripped him hard. For a moment he dangled helplessly. Then both men reached his arm and pulled him up.

"Now, Geiger," said Swenson.

"You can't hold the ladder," said Geiger.

"I can," answered the big Swede.

They stood still a moment. They heard the ominous crunching of the fire under them, and they knew that it soon would knock at the door. Geiger climbed, Swenson strained hard with both feet braced under the window sill. He had promised to shout when he could no longer hold the ladder. When Geiger was half way up he shouted. Then he felt the ladder lighten suddenly and he saw Geiger's body swing off into the air. For a moment he went sick at the sight; then he saw Kirk and Ford pulling him up on their belts.

All this had taken place in less than three minutes. The whole building was burning now, and the air was full of cinders. Swenson could not see the street pavement, but he caught glimpses of the white rods of water driving into the windows below him.

Swenson stood on the stone ledge with one hand gripped inside of the window casing. Then he lifted the ladder and threw it up round by round with his right hand, pausing between each hitch to be sure of the balance. So much for the fire drill. When it was nearly up he strained hard, and Kirk and Ford, who had buckled their belts together, dropped the loop around the hooks at the end, drew it up, and fitted it firmly over the cornice edge. Swenson swung out on the lower end of it, scrambled to the top, hand over hand, and rolled out on the roof.

They were just in time to see another section of the roof go down with a terrific crash that sent the flames and cinders leaping a hundred feet in air. The whole building quivered, and for a moment they thought the walls were going down. There was fire on every side of them and under them, and the smoke cut off the sky from above. Their faces were already scorched with the heat.

Directly across the street from the Wellington Hotel and about sixty feet away there stood a four-story apartment building. A telephone wire cable a little more than an inch in diameter extended from the roof of one to the roof of the other. On the top of the hotel it was fastened to a stout post, and it pitched off over the edge of the roof at a sharp angle downward to the other building. Kirk, being the lightest, was selected to go first, Swenson and the other three men, fearing that the cable had been injured beyond the post, laid firm hold of it and braced their feet. Kirk sat on the edge of the cornice with his feet hanging over. Then he slid off, crossed his legs over the wire as over a life-line, and slipped down. The cable sagged until it seemed about to snap. Hand over hand Kirk slid across the chasm, teetering and swaying from side to side until the men on the roof turned their heads away. When Kirk was over, Ford followed him without a word, and Geiger followed Ford. Each time the cable sagged deeper and the post bent further down. Swenson buckled four belts together and brought them around Harrison's body and over the cable. "Keep hold," he said, "and you can't fall."

But Harrison was now dazed and only half conscious. When he began to slide he grasped feebly at the cable, and then it slipped between his fingers. His body shot down heavily and stopped with a jerk that all but snapped the cable. For a moment he dangled at the end of the belt straps, then he whizzed across the street and drove headlong into the post on the further side.

By this time Kirk and Ford had lost all trace of Swenson. Smoke and flames enveloped the entire building, and from the shouts in the street below, they knew that the wall would soon go down. Suddenly Swenson shot out of the smoke, spun a moment on the cable, and fell at their feet. His hands and ankles were terribly lacerated and burned where they had slipped on the cable. But all four of the firemen managed to hobble down-stairs without assistance. On the first floor they passed through a company of hotel guests talking to reporters about their narrow escapes—three women had fainted, and one man had fallen downstairs.

"One hundred thousand dollars fire damage," said a head-line in one of the papers next morning, "but no lives lost."