It was a terrible position,—fire before and behind, and no escape but the window!
Both men rushed to a casement, and cried aloud, "Throw up a line!" The crowd below saw the men tearing at the window-bars and endeavouring to break them, while the fire rapidly spread towards them.
Could no help be given? Howard had endeavoured to rejoin the two men, and, finding this impracticable, turned to obtain external aid. The ladders on the engine were fixed together, but they fell far short of the high window. A builder's ladder was added; but even this extension would not reach the two men caged up high above in such fearful peril.
A moment or two of dreadful suspense, and then the crowd burst forth into loud cheers. Ashby was seen to be forcing his way through the iron bars. He was small in stature, and his size was in his favour. By some means, perhaps scarcely known to himself, he dropped down to the top of the ladder and clung there, and finally, though very much burned, he reached the ground in safety.
But the other? Alas! his case was far different. It is supposed that the smoke overcame him, and that he fell on his face; but he was never seen alive again. Engines rattled up from all parts of London, and quantities of water were thrown on the flames, but to no effect so far as he was concerned. When the fire was subdued, and the men hastily made their way to the upper floor, they found only his charred remains. He had died at his post, the smoke suffocation, it may be hoped, rendering him insensible to pain.
But an even more terrible accident happened to a fireman named Ford, in October, 1871. His death, after saving six persons, remains one of the most terrible in the annals of the brigade.
FIREMAN FORD AT THE GRAY'S INN ROAD FIRE.
About two in the morning of October 7th, 1871, an alarm of fire reached the Holborn station. The call came from Gray's Inn Road; and Ford, who had charge of the fire-escape, was soon at the scene of action. He found a fire raging in the house of a chemist at No. 98 in the road, and the inmates were crying for help at the windows.
Placing the escape against the building, he hurried to a window in one of the upper floors, and, assisted by a policeman, brought down five of the inhabitants in safety. Still there was one remaining, and frantic cries from a woman in a window above led him to rush up the escape once more. He had taken her from the building, and was conveying her down the escape, when a burst of flame belched out from the first floor and kindled the canvas "shoot" of the escape. In a second, both the fireman and the rescued woman were surrounded by fire.