"Can you hold them back?" the captain had shouted down to the boys a few minutes before, as he peered down at the struggling mass on the lower deck.
"We'll stick it out as long as we can," Ned had assured him, as he whirled a terrified male passenger about and sent him spinning backward whining pitifully that he "didn't want to die."
Suddenly Herc was confronted by a huge form, brandishing a steel spanner in a knotty fist.
It was one of the panic-stricken firemen.
"Let me by, kid!" bellowed this formidable antagonist.
"You can see for yourself that there are several women to go yet," responded Herc calmly, although he felt anything but easy in his mind as the muscular giant glared at him with terror and vindictiveness mingling in his gaze. "Women first, that's the rule."
"What in blazes do I care about the women?" roared the fireman, behind whom were now ranged several of his companions. "Let me by, or——"
He flourished the spanner with a suggestive motion anything but agreeable to Herc.
The red-headed boy gazed over in the direction in which he had last seen Ned.