AN UP-TO-DATE RESCUE
Ned Link was almost sleeping—dozing certainly—in the big waiting room of one of the Zeppelins where he had been engaged since that astounding trip on the Fourth herein veraciously rehearsed. He was sleepingly ruminating over the possible arrival upon his domestic hearth of a smaller Ned Link when the door of the apartment incontinently burst open and a frightened man stumbled into the room.
Ned recognized him as one from a near-by telegraph office; he seemed out of breath, indeed his disorder roused Ned into a sitting posture of attention.
“Well, old Man, what’s the row. You look as if you had heart failure. Ennything up?”
The gasping figure caught its wind once more, and stuttered, “UP! Well I guess Yes. Riot and Bloodshed. That’s what’s UP. You’re wanted—or SOMEONE and quick too I can tell yer.”
Ned jumped to his feet. The man handed him a telegram. Its contents were startling enough. It read:
“Hurry up a Balloon to the Municipal Building, Court Street, City Hall. Rioters! Party marooned on roof. Building on FIRE. C. Q. D.”
Ned’s experience in various capacities, some of which the reader recalls, had induced in him a preternatural composure under trying and nerve-unsettling circumstances, but it was evident that he was now a little disturbed.
He whistled in a tender low way that always marked a crisis in his perplexities:
“When did this telegram come?”
“This minute, I wasn’t——”
But the sentence was not completed. Three messengers burst in at the door, each almost speechless, and each ambitious of priority. They showed exactly the same marconigram. Well! there must be action somehow. Ned called up the foreman, ordered the shaft opened above the storage stable of the huge dirigible, and after choosing three assistants who stayed below in the coach mounted in his seat on the pilot. It might have then been noticed by any one to whom Ned’s previous exploits were familiar that a ladder-way of steel ropes led from the pilot to the passenger coach. A lesson had been learned.
Slowly, with its irksome style of getting under way, as if reluctant to break its rest with a new struggle in the wide oceans of air to which it soared, the big Zeppelin rose between its guides, the motor fans began their whizzing revolutions, and the four messengers strained their necks watching its straight ascent. It was just eight o’clock. A few minutes later the watchers relieved their necks, for the balloon ship was swiftly gliding southward in the yet squally and uncertain lowering night, at first a dark shadowy bolide noiselessly veering right and left, then suddenly, as Ned turned on its light, an aerial pyrosome flashing in the upper sky.
Ned had prepared for emergencies—he revolved the affair in his patient mind. Some people, he thought, driven to the top of the magnificent sky-scraper—he knew it well—couldn’t get off on any adjoining and level surface for there were none—but how, it puzzled him to think, had the huge place taken fire—what did it mean—rioters? Eh,—Tom had been talking that—Sure, but then—Well, he had his job cut out all right just now—and he knew it meant trouble—he couldn’t settle his gas-bag down in a sheet of flame or—for that matter in any much heated lake of air—couldn’t do it nohow—everything would expand—and—BUST!
How was the wind?—blowing—was it blowing at all—Yes—a fairly stiff breeze from the north-west—it was clearing—Well, he could get on the lee side of the flames—perhaps?—he had ropes and baskets, the men certainly could windlass ’em up—it looked that way—if—there weren’t TOO MANY—Confound it—rather risky business—but—good pay for the Consarn—and for himself?—well—He wasn’t saying anything—that was a matter of duty—yes, damn it, DUTY—And yet there might be some “dough” in it—he was not above considering life-saving a thing of business—and—Reward—not that he wouldn’t do it without pay—of course—NOT A SHINER—SURE!
Ha—he saw it—the smoke away down there—on the jagged sky-line. Where was he now? About 110th street he guessed—there was the black colossus of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—and the pillars in Mount Morris park—emitting the purple crown of rays that shed a spectral splendor in the heavens and put out the stars—just there at least to the East. YES—he was making it. Time? Gee Wizz—the wind was just hurling him—it made him nervous about stopping—his megaphone?—all right.
IF he could get an anchorage—his grapples were stout—chains too—he’d swing and let down—throw out his anchors—heave over—hold fast—and then let the men lower the baskets and get the Galoots up—some way—To Hell with fires anyhow!—WHERE they belong too. And Ned Link snickered at his forlorn humour.
What was this below him now—Why St. Patrick’s—Fifth and Fiftieth—he WAS going SOME—no mistake—and now the ragged smoke line southward smitten by the auroras of the city looked like some metallic python unrolling its horrid gold and bronzy folds across the edges of the houses—yes, twenty of ’em—Soon he would be there—he saw it all—the Municipal in flames and—he thought he heard SHOOTING—lots of it—he was sweeping then away from the Kohinoor—or, Tom’s old roost—and below him the glitter of Union Square suddenly showed up—Yes!—_it was_ shooting!—what in the name of Goodness was up anyhow?—Rebellion?—why, to be sure, he had heard Tom talking some about popular insurrection, and anarchical high-jinks—but Pshaw!—well, it was time to be taking notice—he was getting down town—there was a deal of bustle going on below—he now heard the guns and cries distinctly—but—God! look there!——
And wasn’t that some one hallooing?
Ned had indeed approached the flaming, sullenly smoking Municipal Building. For an instant he had dangerously grazed, as it were, the invisible boisterous streams of hot air uplifted from it, making tempestuous drifts in the upper sky and had gotten an idea of the fierce convection of air that whirled him upwards or tossed him around like a cork in the spiral twists of a rapid. The wind was blowing but slightly; the night had cleared. Ned studied the situation a few minutes; he saw that the fire was on one side of the building and though roaring within with a stentorian hum and pushing upwards as floor after floor dissolved away in its awful heat the roof was yet at a considerable height above the flames. It seemed to him possible to maneuver so that he might get close in, on the off side—the windward side—and he swept past the building once or twice almost on the level of its upper stories, shouting through his megaphone to the cluster of people—he counted twelve—who had also seen him and who called back, some of them running to and fro, a few motionless together, and others standing apart with bowed heads.
From the moment when they were incontinently hurried to the roof, at the instant when the attacking rioters surrounded the Building, to the welcome sight of Ned’s aerial arrival in the monstrous air-ship, that, in the night, afire with its lights, glided to them like some impossible globular exhalation, Helen Lorimer and Amato had passed through some trying hours. The unexpected events developed with such rapidity that no one had very much considered the situation or understood at all well just what had happened.
Flight somewhere from an unexpected danger was about the only thing at first clearly realized. The flight had been effectively quick, and when the elevator started to the roof it held the ten who had obeyed the hasty summons, they consisting of the Judge, Helen, Amato, Mr. Moser, his opponent Meldexter, a court stenographer, two reporters, and, strangely enough, two women who had been in the court room during the trial.
There was a whimsical element in the escape thus effected to the roof of a sixteen story building, for, by no apparent means, could their isolation there be relieved, and, though pretty well startled, some were not disinclined to see the humorous side of the situation.
“We shall be above the danger—whatever it is—but shall we be any better off there? I should prefer to be nearer the ground myself, where my legs might be more useful. I haven’t grown wings yet,” said Mr. Meldexter.
“Well,” said Mr. Moser, “at least we may hope to be forgotten. Out of sight out of mind, though, your Honor, it may be yourself that will prevent any such fortunate oblivion. If these are really desperate rioters they won’t forget the Judge.”
That distinguished jurist failed to see the amusing side of the predicament and yet, driven to the wall by the real or assumed coolness of the company, grudgingly admitted a forlorn attempt at pleasantry, in his reply. It was hardly a subject he thought for amusement, but if it was in his power to apply “summary proceeding” for their extrication, he would not hesitate to stretch the limits of his prerogative in the case.
Amato was unmistakably worried, and Helen Lorimer was silent. The reporters had learned something about the facts, and their tale, when understood, put a very serious complexion upon the disturbance. It was an insurrection for the release of the prisoners, and had been well planned and was unexpectedly vigorous. After the manner of their class they enlarged picturesquely upon the few rumors they possessed, and were not loth to impress upon the little company around them their own unsupported convictions that the City was in the throes of a monstrous and quite ungovernable upheaval.
“It can not be,” it was Helen Lorimer speaking, “There is no reason for any thing so wrong, so frightful! A few wicked spirits have done this. They mislead and destroy their helpless dupes. Oh! how ruthless, shameless, unfair it is!”
“It’s probably no particular care of theirs how often they try this same hopeless cause, as long as they can get a good living, a little useful notoriety, and an uninterrupted holiday out of it. But, Madame, your interest in miscreants of this class hardly permits you, it seems to me, now to find fault with them.”
It was Mr. Meldexter speaking.
“I find fault with the real offenders, Sir; my sympathy for those unjustly accused is all the more real, because I detest their selfish leaders.”
Then the Judge interrupted; “It won’t do just now, my friends, for us to argue this out, or even to run the risk of disagreement in anything. Let us keep together, bodily and mentally, and give our undivided attention to getting out of a bad scrape. Were we not told that a marconigram had been sent for a Zeppelin?”
“Yes; Yes,” was the reassuring answer of the elevator-man: “a balloon has been called. It’s pretty sure to be needed. You can’t go down now. The building’s afire.”
This forlorn state of affairs might already have been detected, for the acrid smell of smoke came up the shaft, carried by the hurrying currents of warm air that was filling the place, though the eating energy of the conflagration had not yet reached the shaft.
The faces of the majority blanched, and Amato felt a strange dread. Perhaps to all the thoughtful there, the physical factors involved in a building sixteen stories high, with a fire at its base, suggested how the irresistible draught and pressure would add incalculable force to the voracious flames, and how the enormous structure might soon become a volcano-like funnel, consuming its own walls, and guiding its seething storms of fire to the topmost pinnacle, until it too was overtaken and sank within, amid all the crashing floors below it. This sea of flames beneath them was a less negotiable quantity than the insane mob.
There was no more conversation. Some whimpers of fear started with the two women, but they were suppressed quickly. Mr. Moser undertook the needful task, after a moment of silence, of supplying a little cheerfulness.
“The fire won’t reach us. Long before it has made so tiresome a climb—remember there are some fifteen solid floors hemming it in—its strength will be exhausted. It will burn itself out in the room it started in. And at any rate we are sure to be taken off.”
“How do you know that?” timidly murmured one of the softly sobbing women, whose tears felt the relief of Mr. Moser’s agreeable encouragement.
“Know it?” said Mr. Moser with a sort of querulous and yet jocular interrogation, as he noticed the good effect of his confidence, “Know it? How do we know anything? The call for a Zeppelin has been sent out. It’s inconceivable that it will not be read, and if it is—By the way” with a sudden emphasis, “what was the call? Do you know?” turning to the elevator-man.
“Here’s the operator. Ask him.”
The elevator which had ascended slowly was now at the end of its trip, at the lofty wind-encircled summit. The door slid back, and the slender company stepped hastily out into a small chamber, where the clicks and the soft hum of a “wireless” were heard. The operator, with clasped ears and running fingers over the board of his receiver, was almost insensible of their entrance, at least he paid no notice, except an instant’s glance at the faces of the group. Instinctively they gathered about him, feeling his absolute possession of the only means now of escape. Amato had walked out through the doorway of the apartment upon the rather wide gallery that encompassed the building, and leaned far over to see the conditions below them. The spectacle was not reassuring.
Amato had slowly made his way to the north-west side of the huge structure, and could see down into Court Street. From the south side upon which he emerged at first, when he left the room of the wireless operator, he beheld Chatham Street blocked with people, a surge of heads massed into individual obliteration far south into Nassau Street and Park Row; he discerned the incessant shifting of squads of men immediately at the foot of the building; he had already heard the detonations of the bombs, which broke in the doors—and, at the moment, a tempest of cries rose weirdly to him, and there was light enough—that supplied by the street lamps—for him to make out the massive inrush of the rioters, as they continued to shove through the apertures of the entrance.
Before Amato had reached his dizzy aerie of observation the first section of the rioters had begun the work of incendiarism, careless of all consequences. It was done, as the guards defended their prisoners in the vaults. Oil and combustibles soon displayed their demoniacal powers, not averse, it might seem, to have escaped incarceration in lamps and the innocent vessels of trade, laughing with hiss and roar, in their new orgies of disaster. Spirts of flame, wide surfaces of tortured tongues of fire, explosions scattering fire-brands in all directions, to become new centres for the rising fury of heat, quickly made the great court room a furnace of death, and expelled headlong the panic-stricken invaders.
For many minutes Amato studied the exciting scene, leaning over the balustrade in the cool night air, centered almost 200 feet above the tumult—and then—_he saw the flames!_ They smote against the glass windows, and leaped through them with sharp cracks of rupture. He could see the reflected glare of their mounting waves upon the faces of the receding multitude—now stampeded towards the City Hall, following a large, somewhat straggling regiment of armed men. This was just before the assault upon the City Hall.
There was no doubt the Municipal Building was on fire. The wind had risen, the rain was suddenly abating, the fanned furnace beneath him would increase into a volcanic violence, and the writhing iron supports, the columns under the rising floors, would be twisted into cork-screws, and the building would fall! Even as he speculated upon this—a roar reached his ears, the crash of a fallen floor whose iron work had crumpled in the fierce heat and pulled it down, offering another mass of fuel to the ravenous element. It seemed indeed to Amato that the building shook, though his excited fancy might just have erred in this. He then went on the north side, and scanned the light aureoled city, looking down the terrific cliff of masonry to the street. He shuddered to think of the inevitable ascent of the fire, as it marched from story to story, and the yielding strain of the warped and racked supports, undermining the building, which might sink or fall. It would take time, perhaps there was not enough material to feed the fire—the floors might hold out, and caged within its walls the fire might quench itself for want of reinforcement.
Amato shook his head mournfully, he half believed their doom was very near indeed! There—again—a crash, and another vibration like a thrill of agony, in the searing column, seemed to sway his feet. He looked long over the sheer precipice—with rope enough they might be lowered to the street, and some one—the strongest—himself—might be the last to slip over the parapet, and slide down from window to window! It was an appalling risk, and his heart halted in its rapid pulse, as he thought of Helen Lorimer entrusted to this terrifying hazard. A queer illusion seemed to master him, and his head turned and he supported himself for one moment groaning aloud at the awful extremity a chance had brought them in.
Then he heard shots, many of them—like a fusillade—he thought he heard screams, but the wind carried them away. There was no doubts about the shots. Again the cracking reports came thinly to his ears. He looked down again—little flames were licking, far, far, below, the window frames, and smoke in floating curls, like eddies in a stream, rose past him. He supposed the firemen were busy elsewhere. He could see to the east, quivering, rising and sinking, phantoms of reflected light, on the sky—but yet very faintly. The firemen _were_ busy. Putkof had them engaged at the river front. And thus he watched for a half hour or so.
Suddenly his eyes fell upon a little galaxy of light moving like a huge _ignis fatuus_. He wondered. It grew bright. Could it be a balloon—was it theirs—the relief balloon they had called up? Perhaps! Watch it. It waned and waxed, now eclipsed behind a high tower and now emerging, and always brighter. It was certainly coming towards him, Amato thought. He traced its sinuous, up and down, right and left course, with fascinated interest. It came on, its bulk was visible—high up in the air; it passed over his head, shutting out the stars like a monstrous hand. Then it whirled about and rose higher. He shouted:
“Here we are! Here we are! Come back!”
His cry was heard in the operator’s room, and the people there led by Miss Lorimer came out in the gallery, and joined him, some shrinking from the gaze over the parapet that seemed just leaning against space.
“Do you see anything?” said Miss Lorimer, “the operator has just caught a message telling him that relief has been sent to us.”
“See! Yes, indeed! Can’t you see that dancing globe above your head?” and Amato pointed to the balloon, where Ned Link sat, looking down too on them, as the air draughts flung him away from his destination. For now, by some reinforcement, the fire had gained an incredible impetus; long forks of yellow lurid flames were crowding to the windows on the south side. The windows went in by dozens, their splintering tinklings of broken panes lost in the succeeding roar of the flood of fire pouring out. The floors were falling too, and actual shudders strained the building whose very top at one moment, to Amato, seemed to describe an arc.
And now the balloon swept round and again vanished, and again came into view, while all the watchers called and shouted, even the judge bawling with the rest. Helen Lorimer laughed—Oh, just a little!—the group, screaming and gesturing, shaking out handkerchiefs, even coats, had there, over the furnace of white heat rising to them, a ludicrousness that, for one brief spasm of forgetfulness, amused her.
But another shock came, and another, the building rocked, the two women gasped and swooned, the men had white faces, the Judge reeled against the parapet. It was unmistakable, Amato watched the finial on the apex. It described a circle, and it was a larger one than before. He looked for the balloon. Helen was at his side; he felt her hand on his shoulder; he pressed his own over it and whispered:
“Oh! we shall get out of this. Are you afraid?”
“Yes—I am, but not terror stricken. There is a difference.”
“I understand you—there is—but some things can’t happen! _You_ cannot be hurt!”
He turned to her; there was a light in her eyes that shone into his own, and his heart beat fast, a tide of blood had entered her face and made it more beautiful. He forgot everything, the danger, the awful crisis, the place; for an instant, that carried it in an eternity of bliss, he felt her submission, her peace was in his hands, and he felt it somehow wrenched from her by fear, and yet not by any stupefaction of dread; fear, perhaps the strange solemnity of a portentous predicament, had only broken the chrysalis of silence, wherein—_he knew it_—lay the formed powers of her love for himself. The shouts of those around him awoke him; he looked up. The huge air-ship was close at hand; it passed immediately over the apex of the building, and from it he could see the dangling ends of ropes, and affixed to them hooked irons, like anchors. He turned to her again, she leaned against him, the hand upon his shoulder moved softly around his neck. He freed himself gently, and took her arms within his hands; their faces came closer; Amato’s lips moved, Helen’s ears caught the whisper:
“The beginning of such joy CANNOT end in death! We shall be saved!”
“Look sharp there. Catch that kedge and fix it,” the voice came from the skies, and on the top of it came another shock or explosion or both; the building rocked again, to some it seemed that the roof on which they stood, wavered and reeled, from somewhere a block of stone slid from its pediment and dropped to the street; Amato heard its thud on the pavements. But he was only thinking of the orders from the skies. He seized the swinging ropes. He found their ends weighted with grappling irons, like the flukes of an anchor; he called to the men, and Moser and Meldexter came to him from the distant end of the gallery, and behind them the rest. There were in all five anchors; these the men fastened as best they could, holding them in place on the arches of the gallery and calling to Ned to pull on them. Ned pulled and with a long snapping rip the arches gave way, splitting the railing of the gallery, exposing lengths of it, from whose naked edges a few shrunk away, dreading the startling depth they confronted without the saving intervention of the fence.
The balloon drifted away and the hearts of all sank, while the two women sobbed and shrieked. It was disconcerting. But a voice came back, shot from the sepulchral cone of a megaphone:
“Stand to! All right, I’ll be back! Set the anchors inside the windows.”
The thudding action of the fans were heard, and the gigantic bolide swam upward, preparing for another descent in one magnificent sweep. Amato took occasion to look down and measure, if he could, the extent of the building’s dislocation. The information vouchsafed by this inspection was terrifying enough.
He could not see the street! There was a bulge in the side of the building—and he detected a confusion of murmurs coming up to him, as if from the lower floors, a complication of movements, of breakages, strains, and slow surrenders of stanchions, girders and pillars, had set in. The roar of the flames was heard, but the wind, now losing strength, still kept the flames and smoke driven to the south, yet the fire was mounting—it must be—sheets of redness blazed momentarily in the air below him accompanied by low explosions. Amato dreaded the greater ones, those that announced some falling floor, and almost betokened the overtaking of stored combustibles or explosives.
There!—a tremendous racking reverberation sounded below, and, after a pause, another—and distinctly the building moved! Amato caught hastily at a support, and terror stricken looked up again for the balloon, while others about him breathed in sighs and gasps. The balloon was coming in again on a long sweep, and its daring navigator intended to bring it very near. The other men saw it; there were eleven all told, including Amato, and the wireless operator. The windows opening on the gallery, and fortunately at its level had been kicked in, and they were found to be the openings to a sort of attic. There were no lights now; the operator, when they reached him after their flight in the elevator, had kept at his task with only an oil lamp and a candle to help him to see.
But these were brought round from the south side, relighted in the garret room, and while five of the men entered this chamber, the other six awaited the descent of the balloon to catch the ropes and anchors, pass them to the men inside, who hoped—obediently to Ned Link’s suggestion—to find some means within of making them fast. Once moored, the men in the balloon could draw the air-ship down, and the embarkation of the marooned company from the roof be effected.
All stood waiting. Helen Lorimer had joined the two women, and her composure—outwardly perfect, though her heart beat fast with doubt—soothed and helped them. Moser, Meldexter, Amato, the two reporters, remained on the gallery, the three other men went into the attic, the elevator boy stood near Amato, ready to assist. The search of the men inside the attic for means of “tieing up” was unrewarded. The garret-like space was almost destitute of furniture, and presented no irons, links, staples, frogs, or even girders, for holding down the balloon with the anchors and ropes. There were however, some long timbers, joists, or beams lying on the floor, as if remnants of unused lumber from the first construction. The wireless man, coming through a window again to the gallery called out despondently:
“Nothing here but sticks of wood.”
“How long are the beams?” asked Amato.
“Oh! twelve feet perhaps.”
“Well, tie the ropes to them, put them across the windows and let them purchase on the walls, across the opening of the windows.”
“Well said—the very thing. Look out! here she comes! Catch hold. For God’s sake don’t lose her,” and the wireless tumbles again back into the attic.
The balloon was over them, Ned, backing her down with great success. The ropes were eagerly seized—and held; Amato saw Link peering from the “pilot,” and the crew’s heads over the sides of the compartment’s deck. As quickly as he could Moser explained the scheme of fastening inside the garret, while the ropes and anchors were flung inside and the ropes paid out for length. They were taken in at three windows, two at two windows, one at the third. The tieing up inside was a matter simply of winding them round the beams, and driving the anchors—so well as the men could—into the wood. Link kept shouting orders—and said—he’d break off the ends of the ropes on the balloon when he rose, and leave the anchors in the doomed edifice—just then he was holding everything taut.
Doomed indeed the fabric, they were on, was. Its increasing danger was frightful; the whole stupendous mass was leaning! Its interior had not proven fireproof in any sense. The materials of its construction were for the most part combustible, being wood encased in stone walls, and held up by an iron framework. Few of its floors were of brick—it had been a flagrant example either of misconception, or carelessness, or of some shameless corruption. Many of the rooms were sumptuously furnished, many sealed in splendid oaken walls, and into this labyrinth of ignitable stuffs, leagued with hundreds of square feet of thickly painted, or oil encrusted walls, the fire made its way with exulting ease. Nothing could withstand its horrible violence, the immensity of its ruthless power—only its possible suffocation in the riotous profusion of things combustible—through lack of air to feed its own ravenous vitality. And that could not be.
The men finished their work in the attic and came out through the windows to the group, now all gathered together watching the slowly lowering balloon. The ropes and anchors held, and Meldexter led a feeble cheer as the hope of escape brightened. Ned was hauling on the cables, and so far nothing yielded; only one thing kept Amato in suspense, the recurrent jolts of the building, as it seemed to sink or fall together—he hardly knew which it was. With each jolt the balloon swayed, feeling the drag on the ropes. If they only held! The crew was cautious, Link understood the danger; all waited, and ever and anon as Amato’s ears strained to note the reactions at work in the building, he heard the firing of the engaged forces around the City Hall, though he thought its early vigor had waned.
“Hold fast. Lower the crib,” it was Ned’s voice. The creak of the windlass on the balloon’s deck ceased, and over the railing of the compartment descended a basket large enough for one person.
“Ladies first” called Moser, as all crowded towards the welcome vehicle of safety.
One of the two women was lifted in the basket, and it was slowly hoisted, disappearing above their heads or just seen as a swinging spot until it came to the balloon. The balloon was kept floating at about fifty feet above them; Ned did not dare to approach nearer. How long the wait seemed to Amato before the little vessel again swung into their hands, and the second woman was launched upward to life and the world again! It was slow business, and the explosions increased, and the heavy structure swayed. Was there time for all? Amato glanced about him, the light from the balloon’s lamps made it possible for him to finally see the pale faces of the men; he saw too that Helen Lorimer had crossed to him, and was at his side. She had refused the first proffer of the basket, and said she would go last. It was now her turn; a second time the basket returned, and all held tight. Moser and Meldexter spoke together:
“Miss Lorimer, we are ready.” The smoke was coming up to them, and even spits of fire and a shower of sparks at intervals burst around them; these Ned feared. His voice sounded from the pilot:
“Look alive. Let the men come double.” Miss Lorimer did not stir; But no one was kept waiting, she spoke very clearly “I will go with Amato!”
Amato felt his heart stand still—No—Madness—She must go. He too spoke clearly:
“Helen, for God’s sake don’t wait! We will all come. But now—delay is fatal—take the chair.”
“Come there” it was Ned Link’s voice, “This is no time for kidding.”
Amato seized Miss Lorimer’s hand; what had occurred flashed upon him as her Acceptance. Strange to be introduced to one’s perpetual happiness on the edge of the chance of Death! He helped her to the chair, and it went upward as a fresh uprush of sparks and blinding smoke issued even from their feet. That was an awful instant, but to Amato its terror faded and—as though he trod along some earthly vale of flowers in the very midst of applauding friends, with his soul’s desires satisfied—he forgot its very existence; he dreamed:
“Rudolph, I would rather wait. But I will go. Be sure to follow.”
The whisper was in his ears, as the basket rose for the third time.
No one spoke; the men were by themselves; there was a possibility of panic; Moser felt it, so did Meldexter: they drew together, there had been a sort of scuffle between the reporters, and the court stenographer had showed a suspicious excitement. The Judge had intervened in the quarrel between the reporters, and pointed out the danger of any folly; there was but one way out of the crisis; if they lost their heads, they lost their lives. Stilled for a moment, the group watched for the return of the basket, and it came back quickly. As it approached the two scufflers rushed past Amato—they were on his side—and seized the cradle; they were white with terror, and at its side they struck out, the taller pushing the smaller man off, as he fought with Moser and Meldexter to keep possession of the basket. Amato had been almost hurled from the gallery through one of the open spaces made by the previous tearing off of the gallery wall. His recovery was just quick enough, and the next moment, discovering the predicament this loss of self-control placed them in, he dashed upon the tall combatant, seized him by the coat collar, and flung him off the cradle. He stumbled upon the smaller man, and the three fell together in a heap upon the gallery space. Amato was on his feet in a trice, and as the other two rose, he knocked them both flat again on their backs. The lesson was deserved; it was remembered as well.
During this incipient brawl Moser and Meldexter got the Judge into the chair, which again swung off, and was pulled up. After that there were no more interruptions. Discipline did its perfect work, but there was good reason for speed. The smoke was increasing, and the rain of sparks, not unmixed with heavier elements, fell about them. In the next load the two reporters and operator were placed, as the other men feared for their collapse. It was now actually getting hot, and Ned, watching everything, was shouting for greater haste. The huge inflated bag veered and tossed and strained on the ropes, and the imminent danger of its freeing itself grew more alarming. Again the basket descended, and this time Ned ordered that two men and the boy get in:
“Get in sitting on each others’ lap, and hold fast the guide rope;” thundered the impatient Ned. It was done and the three arrived in safety upon the balloon deck. Once more the cradle shot down, and there were now only the stenographer and Amato left. They would ascend together. When the women were sent aloft some little pains had been taken to insure against the possibility of their falling out, by fastening them in with binding cords, and this had consumed a little more time than was quite consistent with the urgency of the rescue. The men had abandoned this precaution. Amato being the larger man told the court attendant he would seat himself in the basket first, and then the stenographer should place himself in his lap; both were feeling the effects of the stifling smoke now shooting up from the crevices on the roof in spiral volleys. Suddenly as both had seemed ready for the lift, and had shouted to the men above to draw them up, the building lurched, its great summit slipped away from their feet, and thus, slowly sliding over, was dragging the balloon with it, while the basket caught at an inclined angle against the gallery railing, was tipped, and spilled its human contents out upon the gallery space. Amato felt the heat of the copper surface, and he heard as well, the command shouted from the balloon:
“Let go all! Rise!”
The basket was still there and it was attached to the air-ship. As the anchoring ropes dropped, the basket rose following the upward surge of the balloon. There was one chance for both. The stenographer cowered at the feet of Amato screaming in a mania of terror. Amato seized the basket, coiled the loose suspension rope about his arm and wrist; there was some hesitancy in the motion of the balloon; it settled back again, and this gave time; the rattle of the ropes as they slammed around him, thrown off from the deck, whereon all he loved was now deserting him, aroused him to an insane strength. He could not leave the young man; he felt his arm and wrist would stand the tug of that suspension and lifting; could it stand a double weight?
“Throw your arms about my neck. Now clutch hard. I’ll hold you.”
Amato caught the hanging rope above his chanceried wrist, and thus in mid-air the two swung above the crashing mass of iron, from whose crumbling stories rose flame and smoke, as if, with one wild onset of demoniacal fury, the penned legions of fire intended to break up through the very apex of the proud edifice, crowning their destructive work with a last towering splendor of flames, that would assault the stars. So tremendous and amazing was the spectacle that the men on the platform of the balloon, for one inappreciable but blood-curdling moment, forgot their work. Amato with the stenographer on his back hung unrelieved above the maelstrom of fire. Then came the pull. Ned was raging with oaths at their slowness. But the men were wiser than their captain. It required an even, steady, unaccelerated pull, to hold the strange load; Amato felt the wrench, as his shoulder, and ligament and muscle yielded; the pain darted through him with excruciating force; if only he could keep consciousness! they would yet be safe and—Helen!—Helen—!!
“Good God save him! save him!” thus Helen Lorimer cried and prayed. All were watching the appalling sight—not of the fire but this struggle there in the air-spaces, spaces made hot with the dust of sparks—Helen alone did not watch, but smote her breast and plead with suffocated sobs, upon her knees, her eyes dried in the agony of suspense, her lips scorched and pallid with a heart-tortured fear, her body bowed in the convulsion of her supreme petition for the life of the man she _now_ loved, with an ecstacy of pride, and homage, and wonder, and obedience.
AND THE HEAVENS HEARD. The head of the unconscious Rudolph Amato lay in the lap of Helen Lorimer on the floor of the soaring balloon, pitching and rolling in the billows of the ascending heat; her hands soothed his temples, and pressed to his lips the restoratives that slowly brought back color to his handsome face, and awoke the smiles of recognition in his gracious and loving eyes.
Ned had not separated his inflammable gas-bag a moment too soon. As Amato had been drawn “aboard” belching clouds of winged sparks, like innumerable swarms of illuminated bugs, rose about the balloon; parts of the riggings caught afire, and were extinguished by the crew, and a stinging smoke followed. For the tremendous ranged pile of floors that had made up the great Municipal Building—a landmark in the wonderful city—had begun to double up, tumbling to the ground, ensheathed in volumes of flames and blinding fire-motes; a roar like the faraway beating of the shores by waves proceeded from it. Its pyramidal top, with the gallery, fenced with stone, where the rescued group had only just been standing, had bent curiously to the south—it was this rising of the north edge that had kept the balloon’s basket a little longer under the control of Amato—and the bowed head of the giant, dropped stones and disrupted ornaments from its crest upon the smashing pavements of the square south of it, some shooting outward to the platforms of the elevated railroad and the causeway approach to the East River Bridge. That great conduit of travel had been deserted; Brooklyn at the beginning of the fight had retreated, or the home swarming multitudes turned elsewhere for a safer transit.
Still the balloon drew off, mounting higher and higher. The blazing furnace shone like a colossal wand of light, its thunderous sounds of combustion died away; the last noises of the combat, yet unfinished about the City Hall, were scarcely distinguishable as Link pushed the aerial monster on, and, as it countered the upper air-currents above the mammoth metropolis, beaming in its nocturnal dress of electric aureoles, no note of the warfare there reached them. But lights along the East River side of the city showed where Putkof was busy, and, following Miss Lorimer’s request that they should all repair to Carrara, Link directed his aerial car towards that famous section.
Congratulations were fervent enough among the adventurers in this strange twenty-first century rescue, and the disorders that had threatened the safety of all were forgotten. Amato had become the hero, and the two men who had felt the force of his fists, seemed willing to acknowledge his merit, soothing their discomfiture with the thought that only his presence of mind and quick action prevented a dangerous panic. The poor stenographer hung over Amato in the cabin of the balloon, deck, where he lay nursed by Helen Lorimer. He had very soon recovered consciousness but movement was painful, because of the torn ligaments of his shoulders.
The cabin of the air-ship, of that remote day, to whose triumphs over the powers of the air, the indications of to-day so certainly point, was a small room on the deck of the balloon’s compartment, which was suspended from the balloon, and formed the accommodation for the passengers. In this space fitted with divans, its windows prettily curtained, and holding a few chairs, a table, and some convenient mirrors, serviceable, for their own vain inspection, to the merry companies that made such frequent use of the Zeppelins of the city, in the pleasant days. In this room Helen Lorimer sat by the side of Amato, and watched him with a strange pride and pleasure.
Helen Lorimer’s nature was utterly lacking in coquetry, and she could no more have concealed her feelings, her quick interior acknowledgement of submission to this man, who had so modestly insisted upon recognition, and at this minute had stirred all her feminine reverence for courage, than she could have stultified herself at any instant in her life, by self-deception. Her frank and almost masculine candor prevented that, and her elevation of mind and position made the customary deceits of courtship unnecessary. She knew that this man loved her, and she frankly conceded her acceptance of his love at the exact moment when her own met and embraced it.
“It was an experience—something of a night-mare—” whispered Amato from his little couch as the balloon swam into the purer air; “and how awful it seemed to see you there, and all the possibilities—Ah—!” the pain made him groan a little, and he relapsed into an idolatrous gaze at the lovely woman who bent over him, adjusting with such gentleness the cushions and the wrappings about him.
“Night-mares are temporary expedients, fortunately, for the great purpose of letting us awake into the joy of living, and—there!—is that more comfortable?”
Amato almost laughed; “You did not finish that almost sublime bit of wisdom—of course you meant to say—at least I DO—living and LOVING—now did you not?” and he caught her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Under the circumstances,” and Helen Lorimer laughed almost as delightedly, though the color shot into her cheeks, and the faintest surprise stole from her eyes; “some indulgence is to be expected by you, bold Man, but you must not be as indiscreet in your thoughts as you are in your actions”—yet she did not withdraw her hand, just apparently leaned a little closer to him, so that its retention was more easily secured by the irresponsible party, who even tried to lift the hand of his lame arm to affirm its complete possession—and which brought on a sharp twinge of agony, and a few muttered ejaculations of disgust.
“Be careful. You may be even more useful when we reach the earth, than you have been in the skies. A little patience and your injury will be quite well, and then, perhaps some great risks—I feel grave over this revolt. What madness!—that shameless Longtinsky!”
“Risks,” he smiled delightedly. “The greatest risk I could run, _you_, have turned to success—Isn’t it so?—Helen?”
“You mean a—risk—with me? Well I cannot say—but I will be kind to you in your helplessness just now—I may retract later—you know women have privileges—you probably ran no risk. It was your own modesty that made it seem one——”
She disengaged her hand, and stood up beside him—his face shadowed a little, but the cloud passed and he almost cried out:
“If you invite me to boldness Miss Lorimer, I fear I may excel in that—it is an easier role to play!”
“Yes?—but you remember the old adage—the adventurer who passed from room to room and met the last door, with the inscription ‘Be not too Bold.’”
She retreated a little, and bent towards him with her hands pressed upon her knees and a mock dissembling frown was allowed to add its charm to her beauty—a fact so overwhelmingly appreciated by the young man that he groaned at his impotence and then—without any attempted exculpation for his ingratitude—complained that his nurse neglected his comfort, that he needed more coverings—that his shoulder should be lifted higher, that he must sit up, that he was hungry—thirsty—in short that nursing, considered as an art of “absent treatment” was insufferable torture, and that Miss Lorimer MUST come nearer to him, and minister to his immediate necessities.
But that amiable lady remained at a safe distance, assuring him that her care for him was directed by the most approved wisdom—that excitement was absolutely fatal to convalescence—that he as a patient was not cold, nor hungry, nor thirsty, but—if he indeed did wish to sit up, and would ask for assistance to that end, less offensively she, as his constituted nurse, might be willing to offer him the requisite help. The patient did not remonstrate at this view of his condition, nor did he palliate the resentment of his nurse by assenting to her pacific proposal. He simply rolled and emitted a qualified form of howling—it might have been so called in the parlance of Scripture—and at any rate was sufficiently and intentionally subdued to such a point that it could not have been audible to the company on the outside, whose sympathy was, at the moment, curiously ignored.
The effect of this uncontrolled suffering was immediate. It brought the apparently subservient nurse to the side of the wailing victim of circumstances—and, that her presence there was instantly consoling might have been inferred from the cessation of that unfortunate being’s distress—and, through some less conceivable reason than trained service as a nurse, it brought about a train of results not assumed necessary in ordinary hospital practice. As the young woman leaned over her subject his healthy arm became engaged somewhere in the vicinity of her neck—there was room for some confusion of mind in this operation as she appeared to assist him in the process—and then succeeded a slight cervical intermixture—_so to speak_—it almost seemed as if the nurse lifted him into an upright position, but there was a slight relaxation, and the patient was finally left conveniently propped up on cushions, with a singularly animated expression of complete relief, on his face, while the nurse—recognizing the urgency of the situation—sat near him with an appropriately pleased manner and some unmistakably—and improving—flushes of color upon her cheeks.
The company leaning on the taffrail of the compartment deck of the balloon, wondering at the marvellous prospect of the outspread city, thrilled with a delight that kept them silent over their wonderful escape, scarcely noticed the absence of Amato and Helen Lorimer, having perhaps some correct intuitions as to their mutual happiness. Onward in the illimitable lake of air the huge aerial leviathan made its way; the city below it was indistinguishable now in its details and became a punctured surface wherein dots of light ran into streams of sinuous gleamings while ever and anon a spoke of light emitted by some tremendous electric arc, shot up like a veritable pillar. The city was delimited by the vaporous splendor of the overspreading aurora of light, that strange wonder that had awakened Tom Ratler’s first amazement, and far away over Long Island the reverberations of light shimmered on the skies.
“Rather a narrow escape, your Honor,” said Meldexter, “I wonder what became of the Jury—and the Case?”
The Judge laughed. “Yes, it is a trying predicament as a legal precedent—a Jury liberated perhaps from mortal confinement by the victims of its own deliberations could hardly be trusted if their convictions were against the prisoners; they would be less or more than human if they did not give them the benefit of a change of mind, after they got out. There was probably no verdict reached and the Case is—as if—it had not been.”
“Of course the Jury must have escaped,” said Mr. Moser “Perhaps—the prisoners too.”
“The Case has undergone some enlargement since the morning,” it was one of the reporters who was speaking, “any guilt on the part of Longtinsky, Polinck & Co., has evolved into a tragic immensity that means treason to the State.”
“LOOK, LOOK!” the cry came from the opposite side of the deck. The men hurried round to the place whence the call had been heard, and there were the two women, the stenographer, the wireless operator, with the men of the balloon’s crew, pointing below them to a conflagration which flickered and smoked, rose and fell. The balloon had been rapidly falling. Ned Link intended to land somewhere in the flat space near the intersection of the present Speed way, Dyckman Street, and the Kingsbridge road. The anchors were no longer on board, and his descent was made more precarious, and necessitated a drop upon some even ground. This space was convenient, having been made into a grass land, holding lawn tennis courts, and croquet fields. But as he drove downward at 190th street, what was his astonishment when he saw that the region was swarming with men, and that the torch of the incendiary had fired the buildings of the public park upon the summit of St. George.
It was this spectacle that startled the sightseers on the balloon. But the balloon itself had not escaped detection from the earth, and as it approached, a sizzling bomb shot up towards it to explode harmlessly some hundred feet below it. The warning was however heeded and again Ned raised his apparatus, and soared in circles like a watching dragon, confusing and alarming his assailants beneath; they evidently feared his maneuvers, for now a sudden volley of missiles ascended, being for the most part pyrotechnical demonstrations, in the shape of sky-rockets. The little party of aeronauts were visibly impressed. It certainly resembled—this hostile gathering, there in the northern section of the city—some prearranged movement, and might as well as not have a direct connection with the outbreak at the City Hall.
The balloon whirled upward again and Ned examined the conditions around the opposite hill of Carrara. Here all saw lights moving fitfully; confused murmurs reached them, and a sense of some sort of trepidation in the inmates of the tiered palaces came to them. Helen Lorimer had left for an instant her charge, after a confirmed assurance from him that he was altogether comfortable—at least for a few minutes, though his condition might, after the expiration of a short interval, assume desperate extremes—and was gazing too, with the rest, at the alarming symptoms of disorder in the city, with the Carrara homes as the immediate object of its attack.
The suddenness of the assault upon the Municipal Building had been astonishing, and its success unexpected; it was evident that the City was unguarded. Moser and Meldexter both recalled the fact of the absence of the Militia; the fighting around the City Hall showed the perilous state of affairs, and now they realized that, more significantly yet, a dangerous attempt to ruin the famous Carrara Ridge was in progress.
The more it was thought over the clearer it became; the city was in the throes of a convulsion. Helen Lorimer was agonized at the thought of the danger to her Mother, and of her home. What was to be done? She turned a questioning glance up to Ned Link in the pilot above her, and he saw her wistful face, pale and anxious in the light of the lamps, which had been again reillumined, after a short eclipse, when in the neighborhood of the skyrocketing rioters at St. George’s.
“Well!” he answered exactly her mute interrogation, “we’ll sail down the Kingsbridge road a way, and I’ll let you out near Depot Lane—_perhaps_, if you care to chance it—you can get to the Carrara by the back way along the Lafayette Boulevard. I don’t think it’s very safe. I might get you somewhere else further away, but the ship has got to light soon; there’s something wrong—she’s scorched a hole or something—Hello—they’re off—” and he pointed to the east.
On the hillside where the broad street sweeps now from the brewery at Fort Mendel, to the Inwood valley, a moving train of lights was observed. There were not many and they came and went as if extinguished and again relighted, but they allowed the watchers dimly to discern descending a mass which could only be interpreted as the invading army of the mob. It was indeed Bomber’s force, timing his attack with the assault upon the City Hall. He was a little late; the fight in the City Hall was then waning with the rioters discomfited. Almost as the same instant red globes of fire ascended from the ridge in Carrara, like a silent yet luminous challenge—but that was not their meaning—they were the signals of distress, they were meant to call assistance. The party on the balloon understood them also; all there was again uncertainty and irresolution. Ned followed his own head. He determined to alight near Depot Lane and let them out; the balloon was becoming unmanageable. Suddenly it lurched and slipped through the air sideways, pitching the groups and the crew almost off their feet and righting again with a shock that knocked Amato from his cushions. Helen was at his side—how it delighted him to notice her alacrity—and as she helped him tenderly to regain his position, she told him of the discovery that an attack was about to take place at Carrara. It furnished him some food for thought.
Link kept driving the balloon, shouting to the crew to shift ballast from time to time, and telling all to make ready to “GET OUT.” When the critical state of the region was first noticed, the Judge and the lawyers thought it would be best to go elsewhere, fearing the danger of alighting in the midst of the social hornet’s-nest, which was buzzing so obstreperously. But this council was intolerable to Helen Lorimer, and to Amato as well—injured though he was. Argument had progressed somewhat on these points when Ned Link finished all indecision by assuring them he must descend; he thought he could “fetch ’em a little east of the Arrowhead inn”. Thither their course was now directed. But they never reached it. The balloon either exhausted by its strenuous experiences, and perhaps, too, somewhat overcome and distrait with the reckless and unusual proceedings in the great city, even it may be surmised, suffering from a distracted sense of responsibility with its official and distinguished burden—or, it may be from some more prosaic cause, as a _hole_ in its sides, began visibly to fall, still however sliding forward at lower and lower levels. Ned saw its inevitable collapse, and fearing to come down obliquely on the roof tops attempted to steer it into the highway of the Kingsbridge Boulevard. With his fans alternately set forward or reversed he managed to keep it, though rolling, (which motion played havoc with the gravity of its occupants and forced Helen to remain close to her charge assisted by Mr. Moser, the latter to Amato’s personal weariness) in the roadway, when seized by some last whim of desperation it rose, swerved, and—so to speak—dashed its brains out against a chance stone structure, whose convenient eminence caught its fancy, and went to pieces.
A violent surge upward, a tilt that sent men and women sprawling, mingled with the irresolute and shifting furniture of the deck, a terrific bump, magnified, past all conception, beyond ordinary bumps, and then tearings, crashings, splinterings, and cries. That was the end of it. The contributions of cries came more from the streets than from the balloon. The streets were full of people: commotion and excitement reigned everywhere, and this new portent dropping from the air gave an additional and pleasurable impetus to the emotions of the miscellaneous crowds; another consternation for their jumping nerves.
Ned had leaped from the pilot, getting down to the compartment by a rope ladder, and ordered everyone to retire to the cabin. It was more stoutly made than the deck, and the balloon pitching heavily would probably split, and the extensions of the deck would act as guards. He had turned off all the power, put out the lights, and shot a hole in the gas-bag. Then he let things take their course, prepared for the last bump, and hoped to escape injury in the enclosed cabin.
The bump came, and with it a long hoarse wail, beginning with a queer murmurous hiss, and rising past the wail to a stertorous scream; it was the escaping gas, and the ripping sides of the gas-vault. The balloon shrank into a depleted cavernous bunch of waste, and this abrupt disappearance of the last remnant of buoyancy saved them all. They were all about flat on their backs, and the thud came just and disarranged them a little more, and really no one the worse for it. And after the thud came stagnation, and silence. It was again a humorous situation, and both Helen and Amato thought so.
Not a sound had been uttered, even the two despairing women and the two belligerent reporters had been shocked into voiceless consternation. The distinguished Judge and the celebrated solicitors, the famous Helen Lorimer, reduced by danger—as she herself felt—to the ignominious level of clutching a more or less perpendicular floor, and waiting for eventualities, had certainly a comic interest. And when they at last settled down with the last jounce and no one seemed hurt, though, by reason of the mechanics of an inclined plane, they suffered from a little heterogeneous mixture, and Amato was in greater pain, both these happy souls laughed. In the darkness that laugh restored confidence and it was followed by Helen Lorimer’s voice:
“Well we can be quite sure that we have arrived; that was an unmistakable thump, but doesn’t it feel good to be here? Mother Earth has an unforgettable reality about her. Mr. Link, we owe our lives to you, and now if we can get out into the streets, and see about us, all will be right with us I know. As a sky-pilot, Mr. Link, you are a better success than many who boast of their prerogatives in that respect.”
This alertness and cheerfulness put all in good humor, and relieved the anxiety. There was really not much reason for alarm; the underpinning of the deck had been crushed out of all recognition, but its crumpling up had made the impact of the compartment less severe, and with the exception of the few bruises caught in their miscellaneous contact with the walls of the cabin, and with each other, the party was altogether unhurt.
They found themselves at last on the earth again and proceeded with all possible haste to extricate themselves from the wreck. Willing and numerous hands helped them; they had fallen at about the junction of the old Kingsbridge road and Amsterdam Avenue. They were not so far away from Carrara. After they had “found themselves,” so to speak, Ned Link telephoned for the wrecking forces of the Zeppelin to which he belonged, to clear the wreckage; Mr. Moser offered his assistance to Amato and Miss Lorimer; the Judge, the two reporters, the two women, the stenographer, the wireless operator, and the elevator boy scattered, with more or less haste, to their several homes, after hurried congratulations. Moser, Helen, Amato repaired to a druggist’s where Amato was made more comfortable, and then Mr. Moser looked about for an auto to convey them to Miss Lorimer’s home. Already that home and its bordering habitations were beleaguered by the storming rioters, led by Bomber.