"It's Mr. Dale. Oh, Mr. Dale, 'tis pitiful. You can hear 'em squealin' up theer. Oh, Mr. Dale, sir, what can us do?"
The heat was tremendous, and as the men came staggering back they pushed him away. Then they clustered round him, each face like a fiery mask, and yelled to make themselves heard above the noise of the wind and the flames, the clatter of failing stone, and the cries of hysterical women.
He broke free from them, stood alone near the burning shell of the veranda, and hoarsely shouted from there. "Come on, ma lads. Give me the ladder. Don't shrink or skulk. Come on. If I can stan' it--so can you. Fetch those floor-rugs."
He was almost breathless, but joy seemed to give force to his laboring lungs. He was thinking: "Mercy has been shown. I have been reserved for this. Instead of destroying that one child, I am to save these other children."
He had no doubt; he knew that he would do it. Nothing could stop the man who was doing his appointed work.
To all others the thing seemed impossible. He had taken off his jacket and put it over his head, and the women became silent when they saw him climb high on the ladder and spring blindfold through the flames. The ladder fell with half its length on fire and then smoldered like a shattered torch. Then they saw clouds of smoke pouring outward from a window; and the flames on the balcony lessened and grew dim, as if choked by the smoke. Then there came a shout, and the men with the stretched rug moved stanchly to his call.
He was out again on the balcony, with a child in his arms.
"That's one," he shouted, as he dropped her to the men below. "I b'lieve they're all alive."
So he came and went, rapid and sure, carrying his burdens. "That's two.... That's three.... That's four. They're well-nigh suffocated--but they're alive." He crawled on the floor to find them, snatched the blankets and sheets off the beds, wrapped them from head to foot. "That's five.... That's six. She has fainted--but she's alive."
On the balcony the red-hot metal had burned his feet nearly to the bone, his blistered hands were big and soft as boxing gloves, even the air in his lungs was on fire. While he crawled and groped between the beds for the last of the children, the floor began to bulge and sag, and fragments of the plaster ceiling rained upon his head and back.