It was a dramatic moment, such a moment as comes at times to the lives of firemen. Had the building been a tenement it would have been searched from cellar to garret; had it even been a business block, little less than this would have been done. But a school house! Who would have suspected it of housing a child at midnight?
Others in the throng had seen the child and now great shouts came up from the crowd that surged the line.
Coolly, methodically, as is the manner of those whose business it is to save lives, the firemen backed a ladder truck into position. After a speedy measurement with his eye, the Chief marked a spot sixteen feet from the building, and there the base of the ladder came to rest. Then, up, up, up, as if by magic, the ladder ascended in air. Not touching the building, but ever mounting, it reached the level of the third floor, the fourth floor, the fifth. A mighty shout arose when it came to the level of the window where the child, leaning far out, waved her slender arms in mute petition.
As yet the ladder was far out beyond her reach. A fireman must climb the ladder to bring her down. Johnny Thompson was no player to the grandstand, but a sudden thought had struck him and the next second had set him into action.
“If I go up—if I save her,” he thought to himself as he dashed for the ladder, “she will think of me as her friend. She’ll tell me all.”
“Here!” he exclaimed, reaching out a hand for the truck as the Chief was about to detail a man, “Let me go up.”
Had the Chief not known Johnny so well; had he not realized that the boy had lived all his life in such a manner as would fit himself for a moment like this; lived clean, grasped every opportunity for practice that makes a fellow active and physically fit, he would have pushed him aside—this was no moment for playing. But now, knowing Johnny as he did, he only rumbled:
“All right, Johnny.”
The next moment, agile as a monkey ascending the side of his cage, Johnny was leaping upward.
Through his mind, as he climbed, passed many shadowy questions. Was the ladder set right? Would it fall to position, or would it buckle to send him crashing to the pavement? Such a thing had happened; might happen now. Still he climbed. The slender reed-like ladder swayed as he climbed.