The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-08-23
CHAPTER v.-(Continued.)


The chief, three-fourths of the way
to the top, shouted down a stifled COM
mand, and a short grappling-ladder,
fitted at one end with a pair of spiked
iron hooks. was passed to him. Then
he toiled upward until his feet rested
on the third rung from the top; here
he turned, setting his back to the wall,
lifted the graphing ladder high over
his head so that it rested against the
caves above him, and brought it down
sharply, fastening the spiked hooks In
the roof AS the caves projected fully
three feet, this left the graphing lad
der hanging that distance out from
the wall, its lowest rung little above
the level of the chiefs shoulders.
Miss Betty drew in her breath with a
little choked outcry. There was d
small terraced hill of piled-up packing
boxes near her, possession of which
had been taken by company OF rag
gamuffinish boys, and she found her
self standing on the highest box and
sharing the summit with these ques-
tionable youths almost without noting
her action in mountaing thither, so
strained was the concentration of her
attention upon the figure high up in
the rose glow against the warehouse
wall. The man, surely, surely, was
not going to trust himself to that bit of
wooden web hanging from the roof!
Where was Miss Bareaud that she per-
mitted it? All, if Betty had been Fan
chon, and mad woman enough to have
accepted this mailman, she would have
compelled him to come down at once,
and thereafter would lock him up in
the house whenever the bells rang!
But the roof was to be mounted or
Robert Carewes property lost. AL
ready little flames were dancing up
from the shingles, where firebrandS
had fallen, their number increasing
with each second. So Vanrevel raised
his arms, took a hard grip upon the
lowest rung of the grappling-ladder
and tried it with his weight; the iron
hooks bit deeper into the roof; they
held. He swung himself out into the
air with nothing beneath him, caught
the rung under his knee, and for a
moment hung there, while the crowd
withheld from breathing; then a
cloud of smoke. swirling that way,
made him the mere ghostly nucleus OF
itself blotted him out altogether, and
as it rose slowly upward, showed the
ladder free and empty so that at first
there was an instant when they
thought that he had fallen. But as
the smoked cleared, there was the tall
figure on the roof.
1t was an agile and a daring thing
TO do, and the man who did it was
nightly applauded. The cheering
bothered him, however, for he was
trying TO make them understand, be-
low. what would happen to the En-
CINE Company in case the water was
not sent through the lines directly; and
what he said should be done to the en-
glneers included things that would
have blanched the cheek of the most
inventive Spanish Inquisitor that ever
lived.
Miss Betty made a gesture as if to
a person within whispering distance.
Your coat is on fire." she said in an
ordinary conversational tone, without
knowing she had spoken aloud. and
Mr.. Vanrevel, more than 100 feet away,
seemed particularly conscious of
the pertinence of her remark. He
removed the garment with alac-
rity. and, for the lack of the tardy
water, began to use it as a fail upon
the firebrands and little flames about
him; the sheer desperate best of man
in a rage, doing what he could when
others failed him. Showers of sparks
fell upon him; the smoke was rising
everywhere from the roof and the walls
below; and, growing denser and dens-
er, Shrouded him in heavy wells, SO
that as he ran hither and thither now
visible, now unseen, stamping and
/. beating and sweeping away the brands
that fell, he seemed but the red and
ghostly caricature of a Xerxes, inef-
fectually lashing the sea. They were
calling to him imploringly to come
down, in heavens name, to come down!
The second man had followed to the
top of the ladder against the wall, and
there he PAUSED. waiting to pass up tbs
line of hose when the word should