The young girl in the window heard him, for she paused and shouted some unintelligible answer, to which he replied—for a sudden idea had taken possession of him—“Stay where you are! I’ll be with you in a minute!”
There was no time for hesitation or reflection now. Trained as he was to the immense value which the smallest fraction of time possesses in the eyes of a true fireman, he realized, for the first time in his life, how precious even a single second may be. A hook and ladder truck stood within ten feet of him, and it seemed to the boy that within one of these precious seconds he had reached it, and seized one of the light scaling ladders that hung at its side. With this in his hands he rushed toward the hotel, attached the hooks at the ladder’s end to the sill of a window directly under that in which the white-robed young girl was standing, and had just placed his foot on the lower rung, when some one seized him by the shoulder.
“Hold on there! You’ve forgotten something!”
It was one of the reporters, and as Bruce heard him he realized that he had forgotten to put on a belt and provide himself with a life-line. There was the belt with its big iron hook attached to the ladder, and while he was fastening it about his waist, the reporter ran to the truck, and came flying back with a life-line coiled about his arm.
“Up with you!” he cried, as he handed it to the boy, and added, as Bruce, with his eyes fixed on the window above him, and the life-line held firmly in his hand, began the ascent, “and may God bless you!”
Then the reporter jumped back to the other side of the street, and, lifting his voice above the noises that filled the air, cried, “Stay where you are! he’s coming right up to you!” But even as he spoke the room in which the young girl stood was lit up with a flash of light, and then the smoke came in through the blazing door, and began to pour out of the window above her head in a dark, heavy stream.
On went Bruce to the top of his ladder. Then, throwing his leg over the window-sill, he hastily pulled up his frail wooden stairway, and by the exercise of all the coolness, skill and rapidity at his command, fastened the hooks over the window-sill of the room to which he was climbing. Then on and up again through the smoke, which was gaining strength every moment, and was whirled into his face by the pitiless storm of wind. The heat was terrible, and the side of the building so hot that it blistered his hands to touch it. But he gave no thought to smoke, flame or heat. His only hope was to reach that window above him before it was too late. And to the young girl who stood there in peril of her life, every second seemed a full hour, until at last the helmeted head rose above the level of the sill.
Bruce had all his wits about him now, for he knew that he stood in need of every particle of nerve and courage and decision that he possessed, and that a single slip or false step on his part meant death, perhaps, to them both—to him as well as to the white-robed, slender girl, who was leaning, half fainting, against the window-frame, her fair hair falling in a wild tangle down her shoulders, her hands clasped, and her lips moving as if in prayer.
With a quick bound the young fireman scrambled over the window-sill and into the room. Then taking his life-line, he began to uncoil it, and, stretching out his arms to the young girl, said, in a calm, steady voice: “Don’t be frightened!” It was then that their eyes met for the first time, and Bruce Decker found himself standing face to face with Laura Van Kuren, while the storm of wind and snow was raging outside and the smoke and flame were creeping up behind him.
