"I have no time to talk, but I'm going."
"It's as much as your life is worth, and I won't let you."
"By ---- if you touch me I'll impale you on the railings below!"
The fireman drew back, and, as he did, Cheyne let go the gutter and slipped off his boots. Then seizing the gutter once more, and standing at one side of the window-sill--the side farthest from the burning house--he pressed his stocking-feet against the brickwork of the embrasure of the window, and walked up until his left foot was at the top of the window. Thus his body was now higher at the feet than at the head.
He raised his left leg cautiously and caught the edge of the gutter with the foot. He raised the right leg and passed it over the left. Then he lifted his body up as high as he could by the hands until he got the elbow of his right arm into the gutter. He was able to keep himself in this position by pressing his right knee firmly against the wall.
The great danger of his present position was that the holdfasts securing the gutter might give way. If they did, he would have had no chance of life.
A moment he hung in this way, on the edge of the roof. Then, by a prodigious effort of his enormous strength he rolled himself in on the roof. There was a cheer from the crowd below. Not one of the firemen had believed he could do this.
His position was still one of extreme danger. The roof was too steep to allow of his walking upright on it, although in his stocking-feet. To prevent himself slipping down he kept one hand and one foot in the gutter. Now he thrust his right hand upward on the slates as far as he could, lifted up a slate, tore it off, and flung it over the roof. He did this to avoid any chance of its striking anyone in the street or the area, where three firemen were now busy rescuing their injured comrade. He tore off another slate, and threw it over in like way. Then he had something to lay hold of. Clutching the laths, he drew himself up by his right hand until his breast was on a level with the hole in the slates. Holding on with his left hand, he thrust his right down the gutter and took up the side rail of the bed, and, resting himself on the slates, keeping his toes in the gutter, he stretched himself upward to his full height, holding the iron rail in his right hand.
Again there came a cry of applause from the crowd below. All this Cheyne had done with amazing swiftness. From the moment he had burst through the crowd below, only two-and-an-half minutes had gone by. Yet to him it had seemed an age.
Now his progress was much slower than it had hitherto been, for in order not to start the holdfasts of the gutter, he was obliged to rest as much of his weight as possible on the slates. Thus he had to lie at full length on the slates, and in moving to the burning house had to shift his feet with great deliberation and caution along the gutter.