A minute, perhaps two, it had all taken—no more. Noodles, crouched down against a case just inside the door, had seen the master mechanic rush by him; and Noodles, too, had seen the flame and smelt the smoke. Noodles' first impulse was to make his escape, his next to see if he could not turn this unexpected intervention of fate to his own account anent the master mechanic. Noodles heard Regan moving about, and he stole silently in that direction; then Noodles heard the heavy thump of iron, the softer thud of Regan's fall, and something inside him seemed to stop suddenly, and his face went very white.
"Mr. Regan! Mr. Regan!" he stammered out.
There was no answer—no sound—save an ominous crackle of burning wood.
Noodles stole further forward—and then, as he reached the spot where Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear—but the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to blaze. Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case.
But Regan was a heavy man—almost too much for Noodles. Noodles, choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed, now on the powder kegs—whose unloading, in company with a dozen other awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before—now on the sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic.
Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety—and then, on his hands and knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs. They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned with the pain between his screams for aid. It was hot in the narrow place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the case—but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of the way, little heaps of it. Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles brushed at it desperately. It seemed to spurt into his face, and he couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was swirling around queerly. He staggered to his feet as there came a rush of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse came racing up the shed.
"Good God, what's this!" cried Clarihue.
"It's—it's a fire," said Noodles, with a sob—and fell into Clarihue's arms.
They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head patched up and his arm set. Regan didn't say very much as he lay in his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to come down.
And an hour later Maguire entered the room—but he halted a good yard away from the foot of Regan's bed.