CHAPTER XVI—JACK IN DIRE PERIL
Jack Chadwick opened his eyes and looked languidly about him. His ears sang with the noise of a hundred waterfalls, his brain throbbed cruelly.
“Where on earth am I? What has happened?” he thought dully, as his eyes took in the unfamiliar and squalid surroundings.
“Oh, how my head hurts!” was his next thought. “What can be the matter? I must have——”
Just then recollection rushed back with the force of the incoming tide. The boy recalled how he had followed Jake Rook up the stairs of the tenement house, how he had crossed the roof, and finally, how he had heard Ralph’s cry for help. At that point recollection stopped.
He sat up, feeling sick and giddy. An almost overwhelming nausea was upon him, too. But he overmastered the feeling and rose unsteadily to his feet.
“What a filthy room!” he mused, looking about him by the light of the smoky lamp. “I’d give a good deal to know how I got in here. By the feeling of my head I must have fallen, or been dealt a blow or something. And where’s Tom? He went for the police and—hullo! what’s that? Smells like something burning.”
The acrid smell of the flaming lower floors of the tenement had, in fact, penetrated Jack’s nostrils, although, of course, he didn’t dream for an instant that he was in a fire trap of the worst kind. But suddenly, as he sat there trying to collect his wits, he became aware of shouts and cries and the clanging of bells and shrieking of whistles.
“There must be a fire somewhere,” he thought, recognizing the clangor of the bells and the screaming sirens of the fire engines; “maybe that’s what delayed Tom. If there’s a fire close by there must be a lot of police there. Anyhow, I’ve got to get out of this.”
He arose dizzily and crossed to the door. As he flung it open a great cloud of suffocating smoke struck him full in the face, almost depriving him of breath.
Jack reeled back, slamming the door. A thrill of horror was in his veins. His heart beat thickly, but his blood was icy cold.
“The fire’s here! In this house!” he gasped, “and if I don’t get out pretty quick I’ll be roasted alive!”
He hastily surveyed the room. On one side was a window. It suggested a means of escape other than the door, which was impassable on account of the smoke outside. Jack’s awakening had come several minutes after the departure of Jake Rook and his companion with young Ralph. The flames had now eaten their way up two flights, and the noises he had heard from the street were the shouts of the firemen fighting the blaze and the rattle of the apparatus as it clattered up.
Hastily opening the window, Jack looked out into what, at first, seemed to be a black void. The feeble stream of lamplight from the room, however, presently revealed a wall opposite to him, pierced with windows. One of these was immediately across from the casement out of which he was gazing. The distance across the shaft did not appear to be more than a few feet—possibly three or four. If he only could find some way of spanning the shaft he might yet save himself!
He cast a rapid glance about the room. Its furniture was scanty enough not to require a very long investigation to itemize it. There was a rickety table, on which stood the smoky lamp, two decrepit chairs and the frowsy cot. But none of these seemed to Jack to be what he wanted.
While he still hesitated he felt a crash beneath him. The house shook and Jack knew that this betokened the fall of one of the lower floors. At almost the same instant the panels of the door began to blister, and smoke rolled into the room through a crack under the portal. The boy could now hear distinctly also the roar and crackle of the flames, and it was suffocatingly hot.
“I must do something and do it quick, too,” he exclaimed.
But what? He thrust his head out of the window and shouted at the top of his voice. But above the roar and confusion in the street his feeble cries did not travel far.
He looked about him despairingly. Was there nothing he could do? Nothing to save himself from a fiery tomb?
All at once he gave a glad cry. He had seen something that gave him a gleam of hope. From under the fusty blankets on the bed he had just glimpsed the protruding end of a plank. It gave him an inspiration.
Throwing back the greasy coverings of the cot he found that it was formed by placing planks across trestles, and one of these boards was just about the right length for the purpose to which he designed to put it.
His weakness forgotten in his excitement, the boy lugged the board across the room and thrust it out of the window. It just reached the opposite casement, resting its outer end on the sill beyond by a perilously narrow margin. But it was his only means of escape, and Jack didn’t hesitate an instant to clamber up on the board and begin the passage across the shaft.
Before he set out to crawl across his frail bridge he cast a backward glance into the room he was leaving. As he did so the flames burst through the panels of the door, and he was conscious of a puff of heat like that from the open door of an oven.
As he moved along and neared its center, the board cracked and bent ominously. It was not particularly thick, and Jack was no lightweight. The cold perspiration stood out on his face as he thought of what would happen if his slender support was to snap under him.
He did not know how great a fall he would have, but was well convinced that a tumble from the plank would mean death, swift and terrible. In this frame of mind he crept on. It seemed an eternity before he grasped the other window sill.
The boy had just gripped the projecting ledge of stone with his hands when he felt his support drop from under him. The swaying motion imparted to it as he crept across had caused the end that rested on the opposite window sill to jounce off. The next instant Jack was hanging by his finger tips, with space under his boot soles.
He tried to draw himself up, but, weakened as he was by ill treatment, he was unable to do so, and, worse still, he felt his strength fast leaving him. A cold sweat of horror broke out on him. Was he doomed to a terrible death, after all?
All at once his foot encountered something. It was a water pipe running up the side of the house and passing close by the window, to the sill of which he was clinging with such desperation. If he could only reach that pipe he might be able to save himself yet. The thought put new strength into his rapidly weakening grip, and he began to creep along the sill toward the pipe by moving his hands alternately. It was a fearful strain, and anyone in less perfect physical condition than the young inventor could never have done it. But do it somehow Jack did, and at last, by reaching out with one hand, he was able to grip the pipe.
Then came the most perilous part of his whole enterprise. He must hold on to the pipe with one hand while he let go of the sill with the other. And then, too, there was a chance that the pipe might not be securely fastened and might give way under his weight.
But it was no time to hesitate. In fact, every second his strength was oozing from him. With a prayer on his lips Jack clutched the pipe and made the swing. To this day he cannot tell how it happened, but he succeeded somehow in landing on the pipe, gripping it firmly with both hands. It was then a comparatively easy matter for the boy to draw himself up to the window sill and scramble over it.
He found himself in a cool, pitch-dark place, only faintly illumined by the flames from the house across the shaft. Jack felt in his pocket and was delighted to find that he had some matches there, although his money had vanished—the prudent Radcliff having picked his pockets while the lad lay unconscious in the secret recess.
He struck one of these matches, and as it flared up it showed him that he was in a large bare room with a pile of sacks in one corner and some barrels. The place was evidently a storehouse of some kind, but the boy did not stop to investigate much. Instead, he crossed to a door and gave the handle a tug. It refused to yield.
“It’s locked,” groaned Jack, tears almost rising to his eyes in his disappointment.
He beat on the portal and shouted with all his might, but no answer came. In fact, had he known it, he was in a warehouse in which nobody lived. At last, tired out by all he had gone through, the boy desisted from his efforts to attract attention. Thoroughly exhausted, he lit another of his precious matches and made his way to the pile of sacks. He sank down on them, noticing that they exhaled a pleasant aroma. He wondered what it was. Presently he realized,—coffee.
The half-starved, wholly worn out lad did not hesitate to help himself from one of the sacks that was open. But coffee beans are not very satisfactory fare, even to a half-famished boy.
Besides, Jack was thirsty. His mouth and tongue felt dry as lime kilns.
Small wonder that, in his extremity, the boy thought he should go mad. Luckily, however, exhausted nature asserted herself, and the deep sleep of total fatigue prevented his dwelling on his misfortunes.