“Why not wait till dark and go?” someone asked. But then it was feared he could not be found.
The bushes were set over the breastworks one at a time so as not to attract attention and as there were many more growing like them they were probably not noticed. When the evening twilight came on Pete and two others crawled over the breastworks and got behind the trees. Each had a couple of canteens of water for they knew that there would be many to whom a mouthful would be so very acceptable.
The three boys crawled and wriggled themselves toward the rebel lines shielded by the trees. Their movements necessarily had to be very slow so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. The ruse was well planned and executed, but fraught with much danger. They found their comrade and had to lie behind their shelter until darkness concealed their movements, and then the wounded comrade was brought into the lines and his life saved.
A HERO OF PEACE.
Boyle performed a more heroic act at a New York fire in the Bowery a few years ago.
One afternoon a fire broke out in a block, the two upper stories of which were used as a “sweat shop.” Boyle was playing the drums in the orchestra of an adjoining theatre. He, with others, ran up on to the roof and saw scores of girls who had been working in the burning building, running frantically around the roof. The flames had cut them off from the lower part of the building and they had gone to the roof, but as the block was higher than all of the adjoining ones except the theatre and that was separated by the space of several feet, it seemed that they were lost and many flung themselves in despair to the street.
Boyle took in the situation instantly and calling to his aid two men they wrested an iron fire escape from its fastenings on the theatre and with it bridged the space between the buildings.
Pete then laid a board on top of it and finding that many of the girls dare not cross, he took a rope with him, and went over on the burning building, threw one end back to his helpers and then compelled the girls to walk over the bridge, using the rope as a hand rail. His bravery and nerve saved the lives of very many who but for him would have been lost.
He was the last one to leave the roof of the building and was so badly burned that he had to go to the hospital, and when I met him that day in the park he was just getting around again.
Peter Boyle probably never attended a Sunday school in his life, but I am glad that my faith is of the kind that helps me to believe that when the Book of Life is opened there will be found a balance to his credit.