  Forest City was on fire. The wind was directly behind the blaze. Before it, beckoning it on, were tons of confetti, board walks, dry as tinder, and flimsy structures of stucco and lath. Nothing could save this play place of the frightened thousands. Realizing this, and fearing death from the blaze, the throngs that but a moment before were screaming with merriment now raced screaming and shouting with fear toward the back of the park where there were no exits, but where flimsy board fences would offer little resistance to their mad onrush. To add to the terror of the moment, the powerhouse was at once attacked by the unhindered blaze. The cables were burned. Every chain, every cable, every wheel of the place suddenly stopped. The moving platform which bore the gondolas of the City of Venice majestically on their way, came to a sudden halt. The men, women and children who crowded the gondolas were obliged to leap into the water and to battle their way as best they could through the maze of plaster-of-paris castles, humble homes and shops toward the faint spot of light which marked the exit. This spot of light was but the glare of the fire, for all lights had burned out with the cable. Only the glare of burning buildings lighted the awe inspiring scene that followed. The roller coaster, pausing with a sudden jerk in its mad rush, left some merrymakers stranded on light trestles, and others so tilted on a down glide that they were standing more on their heads than their feet. There came the screams of women who had lost their way in some strange place of entertainment and mirth. In this throng were women in thin ball-room costumes; boys and girls with roller skates clanking on their feet; performers from the outdoor stage, dressed in little more than tinsel and tights, and all pushing and shoving, screaming and praying that they might reach the far end and break away into wider spaces beyond before the fire was upon them. And the fire. Having started in the offices, it has leaped joyfully on to the power-house and thence to the Palace of Fools. The faces on the statue of two fools are seized with a sudden pallor. They become yellow and jaundiced, then turn suddenly black. Then of a sudden they assume a very ruddy hue. As quickly after that they crumble to nothing and fall, a mass of dust. Johnny and Mazie will not meet Pant and little Tillie McFadden beneath the statue of two fools to-night. No, nor on any other night. And what had happened to Pant and Tillie McFadden? Up to the last few terrible moments they had been having the time of their young lives. Up and down, under and over, they had rushed through space on the roller coaster. With all the solemn majesty of a trip to Europe they had ridden through the City of Venice. For a time they had wandered upon the board-walk. It was during this walk that Pant had caught sight of a familiar figure, a slim girl with a red rose pinned on her breast. He had watched her for but a moment when he was made sure by her skipping step, which was more a dance than a walk, that she was the dancing girl who had saved his life that night in the den of the underworld. Just as he had been about to put his hand on her shoulder, a screeching mob of revelers had come swooping down upon her and, as a torrent of water bears away a leaf, had carried her away. “Ah well,” he had sighed, “I will come upon her again.” At that he had turned to Tillie McFadden, who was standing staring at the Ferris wheel with the fascination of a child. “Want to go on there?” She nodded. “Come on, then.” They had waited their turn, had gotten aboard and had gone up over and down, up over and down again, and were starting on their third round when the cry: “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” high pitched and shrill, sounded above the shouts and screams of the revelers. “Sit right where you are,” said Pant reassuringly, as the little girl, frightened by the cries and the sight of leaping flames, started from her seat. “The fire is a full block away from us. Long before it reaches us we will have reached the ground, leaped from this cage and scampered away.” The wheel turned about at a snail-like pace, stopping and starting, stopping and starting again. As they mounted higher and higher, the flames, led on by great masses of confetti which acted like a fuse, leaped from building to building, coming ever nearer, nearer, nearer! Pant became truly alarmed. At last they reached the very highest point and here the great wheel came to a sudden stop. Pant knew, from the nature of the stop, that here they would stay, and his consternation was complete. There they were, swinging in the air a hundred feet from the ground, with a raging conflagration racing madly toward them and with only steel rods and bars between them and the ground. Johnny Thompson was at that moment in a scarcely less perilous position. Having followed the firebug a distance of fifty feet up that rickety stairway, he had paused to flash on his light, only to discover to his intense horror that the man, crouching on a small landing not ten feet above him, was engaged in aiming a knife with a ten-inch blade directly at his head. Had he not been Johnny Thompson, he would have perished on the spot. Trained for every emergency, he leaped clean of the stairs, but holding firmly to the rail of the bannister. The next instant the knife went clanging against the wall. For a moment, in utter darkness, the boy clung there. Then, hearing the man he hunted again begin the ascent, he swung back upon the stairs and followed. In that moment he allowed himself a few darting thoughts as to how the affair would end. His purpose was to get that man! True enough; but how? This he could not answer, nor could he resist the desire to follow. So follow he did, step by step, circle by circle, up, up, up, to dizzy heights. The tower had no windows. He could not see the fire, nor could he realize by what leaps and bounds it was fighting its way toward that very tower. “Tillie,” said Pant as he saw that the Ferris wheel had made its final stop and had left them high in air, “I am by nature a cat. I have lived in the jungles with great cats. There is one thing a cat can do supremely well—climb. I can climb. I can go down those rods and take you with me if you can but cling to my back. Can you?” For answer, the girl leaped upon his back to cling there with such tenacity that her nails cut his flesh. “That’s the girl!” he smiled approvingly. Cautiously he lowered himself over the edge of the car to grasp a bar of iron. It was at this instant that he heard a shriek from the car to the right. Turning about, he saw a slender girl dressed as a Gypsy, clinging to the side of her car with one hand while with the other she appealed to him for aid. She had torn the mask from her face. He recognized her at a glance—the girl who had saved his life in the den of the underworld. “Afraid,” he told himself, “afraid of great heights, but not afraid to leap upon the arm of a villain with a knife.” “Stay where you are,” he shouted, “I’ll be back.” Rash promise. To catch at a rod here, at a bar there, to swing from bar to bar as an ape swings from branch to branch, going down, down to safety; all this was hard enough, but to ascend, with the fierce glare of the fire upon you—that would be next to impossible! Yet he had promised. He owed his life to that girl and he must fulfill his promise. As he reached the hub of the wheel he could feel his strength waning. If he covered the remaining distance to the ground he could never return. “Tillie,” he said soberly, “there is a bar going directly to the ground. Do you think you could grip it hard enough to slide down it without falling?” The girl’s face went white. One glance at the pitiful creature above her, and courage returned. “I—I’ll try.” The next second her arms encircled the bar. Following on the heels of his man, a hundred and fifty feet in air, Johnny came at last to an open balcony above which a great cupola reared itself to the sky. In his mad fear the firebug had already begun mounting the stair in the cupola. As for Johnny, he paused to consider. It was well that he should. As he looked down a sudden shudder shook his form like a chill. The fire, leaping across a roof more than a hundred feet below him, was already licking at the wooden foundation of the very tower on which he stood. Even in a vain attempt to retrace his steps, a whiff of smoke borne up from below told him that in a brief space of time the tower would be a roaring chimney of flames. What was to be done? Leaving the unfortunate culprit in the cupola to his well deserved fate, whatever it might be, he turned his every thought to ways of escape. There appeared but one, and that all but impossible. But there was no choice. Sitting calmly down, he pulled off his shoes, then climbing over the railing, disappeared at a point directly above one corner of the tower. While Tillie McFadden, with no further harm than a few scratches and bruises, was making her way to the ground, Pant was performing what seemed a mad feat. He was battling his way upward on the wheel. Here he gripped a rod to swing outward and upward, there climbed straight up where a real cat must have failed, and then, leaping quite free from any support, flew through the air to grip a rod ten feet away. Up, up, up he climbed until, utterly exhausted, he dropped in the box occupied by the girl. For ten seconds he lay there panting. The fire, roaring like a volcano, sent flames two hundred feet in air, scorching their cheeks and showering them with sparks. In a moment Pant was himself again. Snatching the girl’s cape from her, he consigned it to the flames. “Your arms about my neck, your feet about my waist,” he ordered, “and down we go.” He was instantly obeyed, and down indeed they went. Though that girl may live two lifetimes, never again will she experience a ride like that. With the breath of the fire beating upon them, they swung from rod to rod, shot through space, glided and slid until with a final terrible bump, they came to solid earth and went racing away after the fast disappearing throng. |
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