“Be quiet! I’ll do the best I can, but you must obey orders. Come with me,” he says.
“Not down there! no, no. I looked—it was like the fires of hell!”
“To the roof! we must get out of this smoke or we’ll suffocate before the fire touches us. Come, and I will save you or we’ll die trying.”
His cheering words reassure the poor woman, and she clings to his coat. They reach the stairs leading upward, and Wycherley mounting, opens the trap. What a blessed relief—here they can at least get a breath of air.
Once upon the roof of the tenement the ex-actor casts about him for some means of escape, some method by which to cheat the hungry flames that must speedily burst through and envelop the whole tenement in their rapacious maw.
The case seems desperate; no friendly roof offers a refuge. On one side a great warehouse, fire-proof and grim, rears itself; on the other lies a smaller building, with the roof far below. If he had a rope Wycherley can see how he might escape. Without one the case is almost hopeless. Already ladders have rested against the building, but none are long enough to reach to the top. They see him. Shouts in the street below announce this fact—encouraging cries that give him hope. A stream of water breaks above and showers them. Wycherley turns up his coat.
“Pardon—it is my last collar,” he says calmly.
They have placed a ladder against the smaller house. Brave firemen are bringing another which will be carried up the sloping roof, and used to reach those above.
All that now may be considered is the question of time. Will they succeed, or be too late? The fire is having everything its own way. These old tenements burn like match wood. Already the flames have eaten a hole through the roof, and curl and twist wickedly as though stretching out eager hands for new victims.
The heat is growing unbearable, and yet the ladder is not in position. He realizes that the case is desperate, and casts about for a chance to lessen it. The woman lies there groaning. They are dragging the ladder up the roof, and in a couple of minutes it will be in place, but that time is an eternity under such conditions. Just now, to remain means death. He sees one chance, takes the woman—she is a slight creature—in his arms, slips over the edge of the roof, and with feet braced on a ledge, exerts his whole strength to maintain his position, while the encouraging shouts of the firemen below give him hope. It is a picture for an artist—the race between life and death, between the greedy flames and the uplifting ladder, but the ladder wins.