"Hi! hi! What's this?" roared Job Haskers, sitting bolt upright, and gazing about in bewilderment.
"It's the end of the world!" came, in a hollow voice, through the keyhole. "The end of the world!"
"Mercy on me! It's an earthquake, that's what it is!" burst from the befuddled teacher, and then as the bed was jerked high in the air once more, he rolled over in the blankets and slid down to the lower end, where one foot got caught between the brass bars.
"Get out of the building, Mr. Haskers!" came a cry through the keyhole. "It is going to shake to the ground!"
"Yes! yes! It must be an earthquake!" groaned the bewildered pedagogue. "Oh, will I ever get out alive, I wonder!"
The top of the bedstead was bobbing up and down, like a ship on an angry ocean. In the darkness Job Haskers was completely bewildered, and he firmly believed that an earthquake had struck Oak Hall and that the building was in danger of collapsing. With a cry of fright he tumbled out on the floor, and threw the covers, in which he was wound up, aside. He tried to find the door, but the top of the bedstead was now in the way.
"The fire escape—it is the only way out!" he muttered to himself, and as the boys continued to jerk the bedstead around, he ran to the window and threw out a rope, fastened to a ring in the floor. Then out of the window he bounced and slid down the rope with a speed that blistered his hands.
"He has gone out of the window!" cried Roger, who had his eye glued to the keyhole. "Wait a minute, fellows!"
"Quick! We must take away the cord," said Dave, and in a trice the door of the bedroom was unlocked, the bed shoved into place, and the cord removed. Then the students scampered away, turning down the light as before.
Once on the ground Job Haskers lost no time in getting away from the building. Each instant he expected another quake that would bring that noble pile of bricks, stone, and mortar to the ground. But the quake did not come.