“A quarter done, a third, a half, a—but there,” she cried, “there’s a flame shooting out below him!”
Johnny saw it, too, but there was no turning back. Trusting to good fortune, he continued steadily downward. Fortune did not desert him; a breath of air sucked the flame back and the next moment he had passed the spot.
Again Mazie resumed her eye measurement. It was a mad thing to do, but it was all that was left to her.
“Two-thirds of the way; three-quarters. But there’s a lower balcony! How is he to pass that?”
How indeed? This balcony, some six feet in width, left no opportunity to climb over its rail and down. Some forty feet from the ground, it threatened to stop the boy’s progress and condemn him to a terrible death.
As Johnny reached this balcony, flames were leaping at him from every side. Directly before him, however, was a clear space. Through that space he caught sight of what at first appeared to be flames, but what proved in the end to be but the reflection of the fire in the pool of water used by the chute. It was fully forty feet below him.
Johnny’s keen brain worked like lightning. One look, and then a racing leap. With arms and figure set for a dive, he shot far out and down.
He disappeared from Mazie’s view, nor could she ascertain his fate. To go there to see would have been sheer madness. Half burned off at the bottom, the two hundred foot tower was already tottering to a fall.
A moment it hung there in space, a second, and yet a third. Having once more trained her glass on the top of it, Mazie saw a figure standing upon the topmost pinnacle. It was the firebug! For twenty seconds he hovered there between earth and sky. Then, just as the tower bent to a rakish angle, he toppled over and fell headlong.
“It’s as well,” she sighed, dropping her glasses and brushing a tear from her eye. “There can be no pain in such a death. Poor fellow! His brain must have been addled.”