As she switched on the light she saw that the room was filled with smoke, and she knew the fire must be in their wing of the hotel and that there was no time to lose.
There is no better fire trap in the world than a wooden hotel at the seaside. The salt from the flying spray in winter storms has seasoned the wood into splendid burning material, and the breeze from the ocean fans the flames like a great natural bellows.
As Billie waked the other girls Miss Campbell came into the room, with a white, scared face. But she was not excited.
“Get into your dressing gowns, girls,” she said quietly. “Don’t lose a moment’s time. The boys are waiting for us outside.”
Just then Ben Austen rattled on the door.
“Hurry,” he called. “The elevators won’t run much longer and the stairs are burning.”
Hardly two minutes had passed since the first clang of the bell when Miss Campbell and the girls joined the boys in the corridor. There had not been time even to snatch up a hair-pin from the bureau to catch tumbled locks together. But nobody looked at any one else. The place was crowded with hotel guests in exactly the same condition and all the passages opening into the main corridor of the hotel were emptying themselves of streams of people in every state of disarray. If it had been less serious, the girls might have laughed at the numbers of terrified and hysterical fat women, wrapping insufficient dressing gowns and blankets about their large forms as they pushed their way without ceremony toward the elevators.
But a big tongue of flame suddenly leapt up the stairwell at the end of the hall. There was a crackling sound and clouds of black smoke poured into the corridor.
“We must get out of this,” exclaimed Ben. “The fire has reached this floor and unless we knock a few people down, we’ll never get to either of those elevators.”