CHAPTER XVIII
THE DARING RESCUE
Just how they made their way up those stairs Leslie never could tell. The first thing he knew he found himself on the upper landing, and facing a sheet of flames that made the whirling smoke wreaths look strangely like some kind of demon stretching out a myriad hands toward him.
Dick was for pushing on, even though to do so he had to advance in the direction where the fire was most furious. He kept fingering the wall as he went, because with one hand holding the tied handkerchief partly over his eyes he could not depend on his sight to tell him when he reached the door of the room in which he knew the widow had taken up her quarters with her little son.
Fortunately, it was not at the extreme rear of the house, where the fire seemed to be in absolute control. Dick remembered feeling very thankful on this account as he continued to grope his way along.
Whenever the flames died down for a second or two, the utmost darkness reigned in that upper hall. Then, suddenly, there would come another flash of brilliant illumination, accompanied by a dull roar.
Now they had reached the door he sought. To the horror of the boy when he turned the knob, it refused to give way. Evidently, when Mrs. Nocker went to her room earlier in the evening, she had locked the door, being more or less timid about sleeping in the big house, with only Mrs. Kelly for company, and she in a distant part of the building.
Dick commenced to pound on the door with his clenched fist. Leslie added to the din by kicking furiously at the panels.
“Tilly! wake up! wake up!” shouted Dick, using the name he had heard his mother speak so often; for this young widow of Amos Nocker had seemed almost like her own daughter to kind-hearted Mrs. Horner. “Mrs. Nocker, wake up!”
There was no reply to all this racket. Apparently, the smoke had reduced the inmate of the room to a condition where she knew next to nothing of what was going on around her.
Some boys would have been tempted to give up in despair when meeting with such apparently insurmountable difficulties. Dick was not built along that order. He no longer used his fists to pound on the door, but started to hurl himself against the panels as furiously as possible.