A few minutes after George Aspel had borne the fainting Miss Lillycrop from the house the engine arrived. Some of the men swarmed into the house, and dived to the basement, as if fire and smoke were their natural food. Others got the engine to work in a few seconds, but already the flames had rushed into the lower rooms and passages and licked away the windows. The thick stream of water had just begun to descend on the fire, when another engine came rattling to the field, and its brazen-headed warriors leaped down to join the battle.
“Oh!” groaned Miss Lillycrop at that moment, recovering in Aspel’s arms. “Oh! Tottie—To-o-o-o-tie’s in the kitchen!”
Little Pax heard and understood. In one moment he bounded through the blazing doorway and up the smoking stair.
Just then the fire-escape came into view, towering up against the black sky.
“Hold her, some one!” cried Aspel, dropping his poor burden into the ready arms of a policeman.
“The boy’s lost!” he exclaimed, leaping after Pax.
Aspel was a practised diver. Many a time had he tried his powers under the Atlantic waves on the west of Ireland. He drew one long breath, and was in the attic kitchen before it was expended. Here he found little Pax and Tottie on the floor. The former had fallen, suffocated, in the act of hauling the latter along by the hair of the head. Aspel did not see them. He stumbled over them, grasped both in his strong arms, and bore them to the staircase. It was by that time a roaring furnace. His power of retaining breath was exhausted. In desperation he turned sharp to the right, and dashed in Miss Lillycrop’s drawing-room door, just as the fire-escape performed the same feat on one of the windows. The gush of air drove back the smoke for one moment. Gasping and reeling to the window, Aspel hurled the children into the bag of the escape. He retained sufficient power to plunge in head first after them and ram them down its throat. All three arrived at the bottom in a state of insensibility.
In this state they were borne to a neighbouring house, and soon restored to consciousness.
The firemen battled there during the greater part of that night, and finally gained the victory; but, before this happy consummation was attained, poor Miss Lillycrop’s home was gutted and her little property reduced to ashes.
In these circumstances she and her little maid found a friend in need in Miss Stivergill, and an asylum in Rosebud Cottage.