Among those who stood ready to aid, and who showed in that dreadful time neither fear nor undue excitement, was Lossing. Where help was needed his hands were ready, and it was not long, so ill-fitted was the tindery edifice to resist the flames, before the worst had happened, the tower had fallen, and the dead and dying, rather than the burning structure, became the chief, almost the sole care of the earnest workers, firemen and others.
With the falling of the tower one end of the building, from top to base, became enveloped in flames and smoke, and flying timbers borne that way by the wind made the place especially dangerous. As the blackened fragments fell, small wonder that, seen through the smoke and fire, they were sometimes mistaken for human beings by those who had seen brave men making that fearful leap.
It was impossible to keep together in such a place, and we did not attempt it; but as I now and then cast an anxious glance toward Lossing, I noted that Voisin seemed to be all the time near him.
It was some moments after the falling of the tower, and while it was still believed that there were yet men upon the burning roof, that I moved toward the end of the building, where the smoke was hanging like a curtain over everything below, while lifting somewhat above, to look, if possible, toward that part of the roof which might be yet intact. Lossing and Voisin seemed to be eagerly watching something perilously near the choking smoke and falling timbers, I thought, and I shouted a warning to them just as a group of firemen crossed my path.
Almost at the instant a voice—it sounded like Voisin's—cried:
'Look! there's a man!'
In the hubbub of sounds the cry was not heard beyond me. I could not have heard it a few feet farther away; but as it struck my ears I saw Lossing look up, and, following his gaze with my own, I saw something black and bulky, something that looked like an arm thrust out, as it fell down and outward and into the thick smoke that obscured that end of the building altogether.
Was it a man falling there in the thick of that suffocating smoke? I saw Lossing spring forward and dash into the midst of it, with Voisin close behind, and then with a shudder I rushed after them, seeing nothing, but entering where they had entered the smoke-cloud, and then for an instant I paused and held my breath.
The thing that had fallen lay in the thickest of the smoke, and over it Lossing was just about to bend when I halted, seeing a sudden movement on Voisin's part which made me clench my hands.
For the moment, save for my unseen self, they were alone, shut in by the shifting but never rising smoke, and in that moment, as Lossing bent over to peer at the thing on the ground at his feet, the man just behind him drew from his pocket something which I guessed at rather than recognised, something which caused me to spring forward with my fist clenched.