Читать книгу Lost at the South Pole, or, Ted Scott in Blizzard Land - J. W. Duffield - Страница 5

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As the woman leaped from the window, Ted Scott’s powerful right arm shot out and encircled her with a grip of iron.

The impetus of the leap, together with the weight of the woman, made the shock tremendous. It drove Ted’s feet from the bough, and for a moment he hung suspended in space, his only support being the clutch of his left hand on the bough above.

He felt as though his arms would be wrenched from their sockets. But he held on with the strength of desperation, while his feet felt for the bough.

They found it and thus relieved the strain on his left hand. He stood there for a moment while he tried to recover his breath.

Had the woman been of heavy build, it would not have been in flesh and blood to sustain her at the moment when she landed in his arm. Luckily, she was slender, and that fact proved her and Ted’s salvation.

He had feared that in her hysterical condition she would struggle violently and thus increase the danger of his problem. But as he looked down at her white face he saw that she had fainted. That last moment of terrible fear had been too much for her.

With exceeding care and with every nerve and muscle at the highest tension, Ted Scott moved step by step along the bough until he reached the trunk.

There he was able to place his senseless burden in the crotch of some branches and thus relieve himself of her weight, though he had to maintain a tight hold of her to keep her from slipping. Then at last he was able to breathe a sigh of relief. He had conquered! They were safe!

And now help was at hand. Ted could see men and women running from several directions toward the burning house. A few moments more and there was a group assembled on the grounds, most of them rushing to and fro aimlessly and uttering ejaculations, while some of the men were trying to form a line and bucket brigade in the attempt to save some part of the imperiled structure. Most of the house was doomed beyond hope, but there was still a right wing that was not yet in the power of the flames.

Ted shouted and several men came rushing toward the tree with exclamations of wonder.

Ted pointed to the unconscious woman.

“Get a ladder, some of you,” he directed. “She’s fainted.”

A couple of the men scurried back to a garage in the rear, burst open the door, and emerged with a ladder which they brought to the foot of the tree.

Some of them mounted and Ted delivered to them the woman he had rescued. With infinite precautions and great difficulty she was taken to the ground. They took her to a shady place beneath the trees and the women flocked about and ministered to her.

Ted descended from the tree, his heart full of thankfulness, but with every muscle and ligament sore and bruised and aching. It had been a fearful ordeal for both mind and body.

But his work was not yet done and he joined the fire and bucket brigade and did his utmost, although he knew in his heart that the house was doomed. A telephone call had been sent from an adjoining house, summoning the fire company of the nearest town, but as that was several miles away he felt sure that the engine could not arrive in time to do anything of consequence.

In the course of his running back and forth, he passed near the group of women who were attending to the woman of the house. She had just been brought back to consciousness and was moaning incoherently. Then as the full consciousness of what was going on came to her, she half lifted herself up from her recumbent position and looked about her wildly.

“My husband!” she cried frantically. “Where is my husband?”

They tried to soothe her, but to no purpose.

“He’s in there!” she screamed. “He’s in the house! He’ll be burned up!”

The group surrounding her looked at each other with pale faces and fright in their eyes.

Ted hurried over.

“Are you sure he was in the house?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Oh, please save him! Save him!”

“What part of the house was he in?” Ted asked her.

“In the right wing,” was the reply. “He was sleeping there. He had been out late last night and was tired. Oh, he will be burned to death! I must get to him!”

She struggled to get up, but they managed to restrain her.

“I’ll try to get him,” promised Ted, and hurried off.

He called to some of the men and they followed him as he ran around to the right wing of the house.

There was a door to this in the front and they burst it in. A volume of smoke and flame belched forth and drove them back. They could see that the stairs were on fire.

There was no hope in that direction and they rushed around to the back. The door was unlocked. There were no flames yet visible in the hall, but the smoke was so dense that the air was nearly unbreathable.

The men gave back, coughing and choking.

Ted whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and doused it into a bucket of water near by. He tied it hastily about his nose and mouth.

“Don’t try it,” begged one of the men in alarm. “It’s no use. You can’t make it. It will be just committing suicide.”

Ted made no answer, but was inside the door and on the stairs in a flash. They grabbed at him to hold him back, but he eluded them.

The smoke was blinding. He had to feel his way. His eyes were smarting. He kept them as nearly shut as he could.

Before he reached the first landing he noted that flames were at last creeping into the hall beneath. But he kept on.

He opened the first door he found and groped about. It was a bedroom and the bed clothes were heaped in a cluttered mass as though they had been pushed back in a hurry as some one leaped out.

Ted felt with hands and feet along the floor, stumbling at times and nearly falling. But he found no body.

Into an adjoining room he rushed, and here again his search was fruitless.

His bandage slipped and he was almost smothered with the acrid fumes before he could readjust it.

His face was getting blistered with the heat. His overburdened lungs felt as though they were bursting. Beneath he could hear the crackling of the flames.

His hand fell on the knob of a door. He pulled it open and found himself in a small storeroom adjoining the bedroom. He tripped over something, and, reaching out to grasp something to steady him, touched a human body.

Whether the man were dead or alive he did not know. He lay like a log across a trunk on which he had fallen.

With an almost superhuman effort, Ted Scott reached down, lifted up the body, and threw it over his shoulder. Then he staggered into the adjoining bedroom and thence into the hall.

The smoke in the hall was lambent now with the glow of flames, and as Ted looked down through his half-shut lids he saw that the stairs had caught.

Some of the lower steps were burning and scarlet threads of flames were creeping up the banisters.

Down Ted went with his heavy burden step by step. Cries of encouragement greeted him from the panic-stricken group near the door. Two of the men, after dipping their heads in the water bucket, rushed in as the young aviator reached the foot of the stairs. They grabbed his burden from him just as he plunged through the door and out into the blessed air.

He fell on the grass and lay there for a moment, panting and gasping. Eager hands then helped him to his feet, and he staggered to a tree that was out of reach of the heat and sat down there with his back against the trunk.

There was a clattering and ringing of bells and the fire engine arrived on the scene. The firemen went to work at once in businesslike fashion, directing their efforts to saving what was left of the right wing. The rest was beyond redemption.

Two doctors arrived and busied themselves with the master and mistress of the house.

The men of the neighborhood, relieved of their labors now that the professional fire fighters had come, gathered around Ted with loud expressions of admiration.

“Pluckiest thing I ever saw in my life,” said one of them.

“Both of those people would have been burned to death if it hadn’t been for you!” exclaimed another.

“How in thunder could you do it?” demanded another. “You must have muscles of iron. And as for courage—well, that speaks for itself.”

Ted waved their praise aside.

“Just happened to be on the spot, that’s all,” he muttered. “What surprised me was that there was nobody else on hand. A house like this must have a lot of servants.”

“That’s right,” put in one of the men. “I myself am the gardener. Then there’s the chauffeur and the cook and a couple of maids. But you see, as luck would have it, we’d all been given leave this afternoon to attend a party of all the help on the estates around here, so that none of us was on hand when the fire broke out. We came running, though, I can tell you, when we saw the blaze. It would have been an awful thing, if the master and the missus had been burned alive, and they would have been, if you hadn’t come along.”

A few minutes later one of the doctors hurried up to Ted.

“So this is the hero that everybody is talking about,” and he smiled genially. “By Jove, you’ve done wonders to-day! You saved both of them and each one at the risk of your life! Never heard of a thing so daring. But how about you yourself? Hadn’t I better look you over?”

“Thanks,” said Ted. “I’m all right. A bit burned and blistered here and there, but nothing to speak of. Tired, though, as though I’d been drawn through a knothole. How are your patients getting on?”

“They’ll pull through all right,” was the reply. “Mrs. Hollister is suffering chiefly from shock, and she’ll be in a highly nervous condition for some time. Mr. Hollister’s case is more serious. He’s taken in a good deal of smoke. In another five minutes he’d probably have been dead. You got him out just in the nick of time. But he’ll recover.”

Ted sat up straight.

“Hollister, did you say?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the doctor. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Quite a noted man in his way. Arctic explorer, you know. Gustavus Hollister.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” murmured Ted Scott.