Vic had run to a neighboring house, and brought away a clothes-line.
"Has anybody a string?" he shouted—"a kite cord—anything—quick!"
A boy handed him a kite cord, and Vic quickly tied one end of it around his own body. Then turning to Tom Reid, he said:
"Unwind fifty feet or so, break it off, and tie the end to this rope, so that I can pull the rope up. Be quick."
Leaving Tom to execute this direction, Vic ran forward, stepped upon the railing of the front steps, and grasping a window-shutter which luckily was open, and therefore not in the blaze that licked its tongue out of the window, he drew himself lightly up to its top, crying out as he did so, "Play a stream of water on me."
The fireman obeyed, and none too soon, for all the clothing on Vic's right side was scorching. From the top of this shutter Vic reached the window-sill above, and disappeared in a dense cloud of black smoke. It was for only a moment, however. Having his wits about him, he held his breath to avoid suffocation, and quickly climbed to the top of the window, and into the air again. Another moment, and he had grasped the sill of the third-story window. A gust of wind blew a flame from below right upon him. He felt his arms blister and his head swim. One second more, and he must loosen his hold, and fall. The crowd below uttered a moan of horror. The wind shifted instantly, however, and in spite of the agony he suffered from the burns, Vic made a last effort, and drew himself up to the window where Hen had stood. Hen was no longer there, and the room was too full of smoke for Vic to see into it. He knew what had happened. Hen had become unconscious from suffocation, and had fallen on the floor by the window. Hastily drawing up the kite cord, to which Tom Reid had fastened the end of the clothes-line, Vic soon had the rope in his hand. Reaching down from the window-sill, he fastened the line around Hen's body, and swung him out, the crowd below yelling itself hoarse as he lowered away. A few seconds sufficed to let Hen down to the ground, where the doctors took charge of him.
Meantime Vic had to think of saving himself. He fastened the rope at the window, and was on the point of slipping down it, when a fierce flame burst from the window immediately beneath, burning the rope off like a thread, and cutting off all chance of escape in that direction.
Vic saw his extreme danger, but as he afterward said, his mind seemed to be unnaturally calm and alert. There was fire below him, through which it was impossible to pass, and the roof was in a blaze. But he remembered that the lightning-rod of this house, instead of passing straight to the earth, was carried down along the roof to the corner nearest him, and thence down the corner to the ground. Seizing this slender chance of life, he climbed to the top of the window, and grasped the stout gutter pipe that ran along the eaves.
Swinging from this by his hands, he worked his way slowly and painfully toward the corner, while the people below actually held their breath. Whether the gutter would hold the boy's weight or not was terribly uncertain, and the people stood on tiptoe, as if they could thereby lessen the weight, and increase his small chance for life. Slowly he worked along toward the corner, and at last his hand grasped the friendly lightning-rod. A few seconds later he was safely on the ground, but so badly burned that it was necessary to carry him home on a shutter.