In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

Judith was delicately made, and was not strong, but she put her arms under the shoulders of Jamie and herself on her knees and dragged him along the floor. He was as heavy as a corpse. She drew him a little way and desisted, overcome, panting, giddy, faint. But time must not be lost. Every moment was precious. Judith knew that overhead in the loft was something that would not smoulder and glow, but burst into furious flame—spirits. Not, indeed, many kegs, but there were some. When this became ignited their escape would be impossible. She drew Jamie further up; she was behind him. She thrust him forward as she moved on upon her knees, driving him a step further at every advance. It was slow and laborious work. She could not maintain this effort for long and fell forward on her hands, and he fell also at the same time on the floor.

Then she heard a sound, a roar, an angry growl. The shock of the fall, and striking his head against the slate pavement, roused Jamie momentarily and he also heard the noise.

“Ju! the roar of the sea!”

“A sea of fire, Jamie! Oh, do push to the door.”

He raised himself on his hands, looked vacantly round, and fell again into stupid unconsciousness. Now still on her knees, but with a brain becoming bewildered with the fumes, she crept to his head, placed herself between him and the door, and holding his shoulders, dragged him toward her, she moving backward.

Even thus she could make but little way with him; his boot-tops caught in the edge of a slate slab ill fitted in the floor and held him, so that she could not pull him to her with the additional resistance thus caused. Then an idea struck her. Staggering to her feet, holding her breath, she plunged in the direction of the window, beat it open, and panted in the inrush of pure air. With this new current wafted in behind her she returned amid the smoke, and for a moment it dissipated the density of the cloud about her. The window had faced the wind, and the rush of air through it was more strong than that which entered by the door. And yet this expedient did not answer as she had expected, for the column of strong, cold air pouring in from a higher level threw the cloud into confusion, stirred it up as it were, and lessened the space of uninvaded atmosphere below the descending bed of vapor.

Again she went to Jamie. The roar overhead had increased, some vent had been found, and the attic was in full flagrance. Now, drawing a long breath at the door, near the level of the ground, she returned to her brother and disengaged his foot from the slate, then dragged, then thrust, sometimes at his head, sometimes at his side; then again she had her arms round him, and swung herself forward to the right knee sideways; then brought up the other knee, and swung herself with the dead weight in her arms again to the right, and thus was able to work her way nearer to the door, and, as she got nearer to the door, the air was clearer, and she was able to breathe freer.

At length she laid hold of the jamb with one hand, and with the other she caught the lappel of the boy’s coat, and assisted by the support she had gained, was able to drag him over the doorstep.

At that moment passed her rushed a man. She looked, saw and knew Coppinger. As he rushed passed, the blood squirting from his maimed right hand fell on the girl lying prostrate at the jamb to which she had clung.

And now within a red light appeared, glowing through the mist as a fiery eye, not only so, but every now and then a fiery rain descended. The burning tobacco had consumed the boards and was falling through in red masses.