“Save yourself,” he said. “It’s no use. I’ll never make it!”
Van Nesten glared about him. Then he cried:
“Quick, man, your knife! Some belting!” He leaped to the top of an embossing-machine which stood near the window and seized hold of the two-inch leather belt which connected with its overhead shafting. The burglar had his knife ready and thrust it up to him. Van Nesten slashed at the belt, and it fell in twain. He leaped to the floor, bearing an end of it with him.
“Fasten it here—quick!” Van Nesten said, circling a projecting piece of the heavy machine. “When I jump across throw me the other end of it. You can cross on that.”
Van Nesten clambered to the window-frame and made his leap. His feet crunched on the gravel roof of the next building.
“Come on! That belt!” he cried, rushing back to the edge of the roof. “Come on!”
The burglar had already thrown it. It curled in a twisted mass at Van Nesten’s feet, and he seized it up and retreated back on the roof with the end of it. In vain he looked for a place to fasten it—hither and thither he darted, and the burglar, his white face showing through the smoke, his crouching body pressed down upon the window-frame, watched him.
Van Nesten wrapped the belt around his body and stretched it taut. There were twenty feet or more of it, and though the leverage would be against him, he could, by keeping to the far end of it, easily sustain the burglar’s weight for a distance of five feet from the window-frame on which it rested.
“I’ve got you!” cried Van Nesten. “Come on!”
The burglar crept up on the window-sill, his feet curled beneath him. Slowly, slowly his hand led out along the piece of belting—he reached to the center and part of the space that lay between him and safety, but still, distrusting, despairing, he clung to the window-ledge. Then he lurched suddenly forward, and swung by his hands over the abyss.