“The stairs are going!” he shrieked. “It is the kitchen that is on fire. We are cut off! We cannot get down!”
Quest was on his hands and knees, fumbling under his truckle bed. He pulled out a crude form of fire escape, a rough sort of cradle with a rope attached.
“Know how to use this?” he asked Craig quickly. “Here, catch hold. Put your arms inside this strap.”
“You are going to send me down first?” Craig exclaimed incredulously.
Quest smiled. Then he drew the rope round the table and tied it.
“You would like to have a chance of cutting the rope, wouldn’t you, when I was half way down?” he asked grimly. “Now then, don’t waste time. Get on to the window-sill. Don’t brake too much. Off you go!”
Yard by yard, swinging a little in the air, Craig made his descent. When he arrived in the street, there were a hundred willing hands to release him. Quest drew up the rope quickly, warned by a roar of anxious voices. The walls of the room were crumbling. Volumes of smoke were now pouring in underneath the door, and through the yawning fissures of the wall. Little tongues of flame were leaping out dangerously close to the spot where he must pass. He let fall the slack of the rope and leaned from the window to watch it anxiously. Then he commenced to descend, letting himself down hand over hand, always with one eye upon that length of rope that swung below. Suddenly, as he reached the second floor, a little cry from the crowd warned him of what had happened. Tongues of flame curling out from the blazing building, had caught the rope, which was being burned through not a dozen feet away from him. He descended a little further and paused in mid-air.
A shout from the crowd reached him.
“The cables! Try the cables!”
He glanced round. Seven or eight feet away, and almost level with him was a double row of telegraph wires. Almost as he saw them the rope below him burned through and fell to the ground. He swung a little towards the side of the house, pushed himself vigorously away from it with his feet, and at the farthest point of the outward swing, jumped. His hands gripped the telegraph wires safely. Even in that tense moment he heard a little sob of relief from the people below.