“Come on, then.”
They had waited their turn, had gotten aboard and had gone up over and down, up over and down again, and were starting on their third round when the cry: “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” high pitched and shrill, sounded above the shouts and screams of the revelers.
“Sit right where you are,” said Pant reassuringly, as the little girl, frightened by the cries and the sight of leaping flames, started from her seat. “The fire is a full block away from us. Long before it reaches us we will have reached the ground, leaped from this cage and scampered away.”
The wheel turned about at a snail-like pace, stopping and starting, stopping and starting again. As they mounted higher and higher, the flames, led on by great masses of confetti which acted like a fuse, leaped from building to building, coming ever nearer, nearer, nearer! Pant became truly alarmed. At last they reached the very highest point and here the great wheel came to a sudden stop. Pant knew, from the nature of the stop, that here they would stay, and his consternation was complete. There they were, swinging in the air a hundred feet from the ground, with a raging conflagration racing madly toward them and with only steel rods and bars between them and the ground.
Johnny Thompson was at that moment in a scarcely less perilous position. Having followed the firebug a distance of fifty feet up that rickety stairway, he had paused to flash on his light, only to discover to his intense horror that the man, crouching on a small landing not ten feet above him, was engaged in aiming a knife with a ten-inch blade directly at his head.
Had he not been Johnny Thompson, he would have perished on the spot. Trained for every emergency, he leaped clean of the stairs, but holding firmly to the rail of the bannister. The next instant the knife went clanging against the wall.
For a moment, in utter darkness, the boy clung there. Then, hearing the man he hunted again begin the ascent, he swung back upon the stairs and followed.
In that moment he allowed himself a few darting thoughts as to how the affair would end. His purpose was to get that man! True enough; but how? This he could not answer, nor could he resist the desire to follow. So follow he did, step by step, circle by circle, up, up, up, to dizzy heights. The tower had no windows. He could not see the fire, nor could he realize by what leaps and bounds it was fighting its way toward that very tower.
“Tillie,” said Pant as he saw that the Ferris wheel had made its final stop and had left them high in air, “I am by nature a cat. I have lived in the jungles with great cats. There is one thing a cat can do supremely well—climb. I can climb. I can go down those rods and take you with me if you can but cling to my back. Can you?”
For answer, the girl leaped upon his back to cling there with such tenacity that her nails cut his flesh.