She turned a faucet that supplied a basin in the countingroom, held her handkerchief to it, and saturated it with water. Then she tied it across her forehead, letting it hang before her face like a veil. She caught a fold of it between her teeth.
And so, opening the doors between whose cracks the pent-up smoke was curling, she passed through, crouching down, and crawled along the end of the chamber, toward the great rope in the opposite corner.
The fire was creeping thitherward, also, to meet her. Along from the front, down the chamber on the opposite side, the quick flames sprang and flashed, momently higher, catching already, here and there, from point to point, where an oiled belt or an unfinished web of cloth attracted their hungry tongues.
As yet, they were like separate skirmishers, sent out in advance; their mighty force not yet gathered and rolled together in such terrible sheet and volume as raged beneath.
She reached the corner where hung the rope.
Close by, was the faucet in the main pipe fed by the force pump. Underneath it, lay a coil of hose, attached and ready.
She turned the faucet, and laid hold of the long rope. A few pulls, and she heard the dashing of the water far below. The wheel was turning.
The pipes filled. She lifted the end of the coiled hose, and directed it toward the forward part of the chamber, where flames were wreathing, climbing, flashing. An impetuous column of water rushed, eager, hissing, upon blazing wood and heated iron.
Still keeping the hose in her grasp, she crawled back again, half stifled, yet a new hope of life aroused within her, to the double doors. Before these, with the little countingroom behind her, as her last refuge, she took her stand.
How long could she fight off death? Till help came?