As Joe reached the house and looked up he saw that she had climbed to the window sill and was supporting herself by holding on to the jamb.
“Don’t jump!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Stay there till I come. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
He looked wildly about him for a ladder. He spied one at a little distance, ran and got it and set it up along the side of the house. But it fell full ten feet short of the window at which the woman was standing.
He left it and ran to the front door. It was locked, but he put his shoulder against it and drove it in.
As the door yielded a terrific blast of smoke came out that fairly knocked Joe off the low porch. He picked himself up and saw at a glance that there was no hope of getting in at that entrance. The interior of the hall was a seething mass of flame in which no human being could live for a minute.
There seemed to be but one chance left, and Joe took it.
“Jim,” he said to his chum, who, having called up the fire department, had just arrived breathless, “stay here and try to keep the woman from jumping until there’s nothing else left to do. Perhaps with the help of these men”—he indicated several who, attracted by the flames, were running toward them—“you can rig up something to catch her in if she should make the leap. But tell her not to jump. Tell her some one’s coming to get her.”
Before Jim could answer Joe started for the back of the house.
The door at the back stood open and dense volumes of smoke were coming from it. But though Joe could hear a fierce crackling, he caught no sight of fire. The flames so far seemed to be confined to the front of the house.