Unmindful of the cheers that followed the submarine boy raced up the ladder.
Then he struck the belt of heavy smoke. Flames, too, leaped out at him. He went through that zone of red with all possible speed, yet swift as he was, he felt as though he were being roasted.
Then, at a greater height, the boy was forced to close his mouth, barely breathing, for the smoke surrounded him. He felt as though he were stifling, but he kept on.
Up on the sill the watching crowd below saw him. Then Jack Benson leaped inside.
Ah! He could breathe, here, just a bit more, though the smoke had followed him.
At the further end of the room, by the door that opened upon the corridor, the flames were eating their way up through from the floor below. There was a red barrier there that shut off any hope of retreat by the corridor.
Yet these things Jack Benson saw only as his gaze swiftly swept the room.
Mlle. Nadiboff lay in an unmoving, unconscious heap on the floor, some ten feet back from the window. She was in evening dress, as though prepared to descend to dinner.
"She can't go through the line of fire in that rig," muttered Jack, even while his head reeled from the weight of smoke on his lungs.
Furiously he sprang at the bed, snatching off the blankets. These he threw on the floor, rolling the Russian woman up in them.