CHAPTER XIX—“STAND BY FOR A ROPE!”
There are some situations so overwhelming that the strongest and coolest may well be temporarily stunned by them. The springs of action paralyze, while the mind becomes a blank.
This was the case with our party of adventurers. Added to this, was the horror of knowing that many of the negroes in the room below must have perished in the flames. Jack felt a sickening feeling of panic clutching at his heart.
In one corner of the room the two sailors crouched, stolidly awaiting death. Professor Chadwick and Mr. Jesson alone remained calm. Even Captain Andrews and Abner Jennings appeared dazed and helpless with the sickening sense of the disaster that had overtaken them.
“We must leave this room at once.”
It was Professor Chadwick who spoke, in a voice that did not falter in its resolute tones.
His calmness, in the face of death, restored Jack’s pluck and heartened Captain Andrews and Abner Jennings. Even the two sailors appeared to be less panic-stricken.
“We can only leave it for the room above,” objected one of them, however; “the flames will reach there afore long. Might as well die now as an hour later.”
“Shame on you for American seamen!” burst out Captain Andrews, “rouse up there! While there’s life there’s hope.”
His words were effective. At any rate, no more grumbling was heard as the beleaguered party ascended to the upper chamber. Like the one below it, the place was bare, and Jack flashed his electric searchlight about without discovering any loophole of escape. As was the case in the lower chamber, the walls were unpierced by windows, and the timbers were too solid for it to be feasible to knock them out, except with heavy sledges.
All at once, however, Jack noticed, as he flashed his light about, that in one corner there seemed to be a sort of trap-door in the roof.
He hailed his discovery with a cry of delight. If they could only reach the roof it might be possible for them to attract the attention of some one below who could get a ladder.
Of course, in that event, they would be likely to be made captives, but anything was preferable to a tomb in the flames.
Jack’s discovery acted like a tonic on the despairing feelings of the party. The iron roof was two feet beyond the reach of the tallest of them, but this difficulty was gotten over by Jack clambering to Captain Andrews’ shoulders, and from that situation he was able to reach the trap-door and to open it, for his first fear that it might be locked proved to be without foundation.
Having opened it. Jack clambered through, and lying flat on the roof extended his hands to his father, who, in turn, used Captain Andrews as a ladder. Then came Mr. Jesson, followed by the two sailors. Abner Jennings demurred to taking precedence of the Captain. But,——
“The skipper’s the last to leave the ship, my lad,” declared Captain Andrews, and Jennings, unwillingly enough, clambered on his back and was drawn up.
Then came the Captain’s turn. Abner Jennings, as the strongest of the party, lay flat on his stomach and extended his arms down within the room. To his legs clung the others, acting as anchors. With a mighty heave Captain Andrews, no lightweight, was raised high enough for him to clutch the edge of the trap, after which he completed the operation of getting through for himself.
As he gained the roof they heard a crash beneath them.
“The floor of your jail has fallen through, I reckon. Professor,” grimly spoke the captain.
As Jack heard the angry roar and crackle of the flames beneath them he could not repress a shudder. It was a drop of fifty feet or more to the ground, and they were by no means out of danger.
“Let’s see if any of those black rascals are about,” said Captain Andrews, “if they are we may be able to induce them to get a ladder.”
“Surely they wouldn’t be inhuman enough to let us remain here,” exclaimed the Professor.
“I don’t know,” was the response, “like master, like man, you know; and this might strike Herrera as a very neat way of disposing of us.”
Several forms could be seen flitting about below them. The flames were pouring through the windows of the lower story of the hemp-drying building, casting a ruddy glow in which near-by objects could be seen as plainly as if by daylight.
But the negroes appeared to be giving no thought to the burning structure. Instead, they could be seen dragging piled bales of hemp out of danger of flying sparks. Nor did they pay the slightest attention to the frantic shouts of the party marooned on the top of the blazing building.
“Great heavens! they mean to leave us here to roast to death,” groaned the Professor.
As he spoke there came another crash below them, and the building trembled.
“The floor of the second room has fallen!” cried Mr. Jesson, rightly guessing the cause of the crash. “In a few seconds this roof will become red-hot, and——”
He stopped short. There are some things that cannot be put into words.
The trap-door had been closed, but before long they could distinctly feel the roof under their feet becoming warmer and warmer.
Suddenly Jack espied a great mass of green hemp piled off in one corner, ready to be raked out on the iron roof for drying when the sun arose.
“We can put that under our feet,” he said, “and stick it out a while longer that way.”
So tenacious is the instinct of clinging to life, that even though they knew it would only avert the end by a very short time,—unless a miracle came to aid them,—they adopted Jack’s idea.
But before long the hemp began to smoke and steam. The heat was rapidly drying out the moisture, and then——
Suddenly one of the sailors gave a yell, and shouting,—“I’m going to end it all right now,” made a plunge for the edge of the roof.
His evident intention was to hurl himself down to death.
But before the crazed man could carry out his plan Captain Andrews sprang at the fellow and brought him down with a crash.
“If Providence means us to die, we’ll meet death like men,” he said stoutly; “but it’s not like Americans to give up the ship while there’s a shred of hope.”
The frenzied sailor fought and struggled on the pile of steaming hemp on which the skipper held him. But Captain Andrews’ strong arms pinned him down.
Jack felt his senses reeling. The hot breath of the fire had reached them by this time. The roof gave off heat like the top of a stove. If it had not been for the damp, green hemp they could not have held the situation for an eighth of the space of time that they did.
Their throats grew parched and their tongues swelled till they were painful, and they could shout for aid no longer. For all the attention the negroes below paid to their cries, they might as well have remained silent. The blacks seemed to consider the removal of the hemp to a safe place of far more importance than the lives of the flame-marooned white men.
Just when Jack’s hope had flickered out and a sort of coma of despair was creeping over him the miracle happened.
It was Professor Chadwick who saw it first.
Through the red glow that crimsoned the sky came a huge floating form.
The Professor shouted and pointed upward. Jack raised a pair of dimmed eyes; but the next instant they cleared as if by magic.
“It’s the Flying Road Racer!” he shouted, yelling like a madman. “Hurray! We’re saved! we’re saved!”
And then something in his head seemed to snap with a loud report. He swayed, and would have fallen heavily on the hot roof if his father had not caught him in his arms.
Then he was startled into alertness again by a sharp hail which came from above them.
“Stand by for a rope. We’ll drop as low as we dare!”