A bell with a deep baying note rang out in the darkness.

If you have ever heard a fire bell boom out in the stillness, you will remember the terror which clutched your heart at the first ominous peal. It seemed to Billie, in going over it afterward, that the boom of that big fire bell was like the last trump on the day of judgment arousing the spirits of the dead.

Then came the sound of voices. The corridors were filled with hurrying footsteps. Somebody ran down the hallway calling again:

“Fire! Fire!”

Billie jumped to the floor with a bound. Her senses had returned at last.

“Nancy, Nancy!” she cried, shaking her friend violently back to consciousness. “The hotel is on fire. Get into your dressing gown as quickly as you can while I wake up the others.”

As she switched on the light she saw that the room was filled with smoke, and she knew the fire must be in their wing of the hotel and that there was no time to lose.

There is no better fire trap in the world than a wooden hotel at the seaside. The salt from the flying spray in winter storms has seasoned the wood into splendid burning material, and the breeze from the ocean fans the flames like a great natural bellows.

As Billie waked the other girls Miss Campbell came into the room, with a white, scared face. But she was not excited.

“Get into your dressing gowns, girls,” she said quietly. “Don’t lose a moment’s time. The boys are waiting for us outside.”

Just then Ben Austen rattled on the door.

“Hurry,” he called. “The elevators won’t run much longer and the stairs are burning.”

Hardly two minutes had passed since the first clang of the bell when Miss Campbell and the girls joined the boys in the corridor. There had not been time even to snatch up a hair-pin from the bureau to catch tumbled locks together. But nobody looked at any one else. The place was crowded with hotel guests in exactly the same condition and all the passages opening into the main corridor of the hotel were emptying themselves of streams of people in every state of disarray. If it had been less serious, the girls might have laughed at the numbers of terrified and hysterical fat women, wrapping insufficient dressing gowns and blankets about their large forms as they pushed their way without ceremony toward the elevators.

But a big tongue of flame suddenly leapt up the stairwell at the end of the hall. There was a crackling sound and clouds of black smoke poured into the corridor.

“We must get out of this,” exclaimed Ben. “The fire has reached this floor and unless we knock a few people down, we’ll never get to either of those elevators.”

“But where are the fire escapes?” demanded Miss Campbell.

“At the end of the hall,” answered Charlie, “and we could never get past that burning pit.”

The two elevators had been up and down several times, packed with people. The smoke was growing thicker each moment, and the next thing Billie remembered was that Elinor had fainted dead away, and that some one had screamed:

“The elevators have stopped running!”

In the stifling atmosphere she saw Ben and Charlie lift Elinor and call to the others to follow them into a bedroom. As she staggered after them, a grotesque figure, screaming hysterically, fought through the crowd, almost knocking Billie down. Even in that moment of danger she recognized Belle Rogers, every lock of whose golden hair was done up on red rubber curlers, the ends of which stuck straight up like scores of little devils’ horns.

“Take me down! Take me down!” Billie heard her scream. “I will not die in this horrible way! Somebody save me!”

Billie touched her on the shoulder.

“Don’t scream,” she said. “It only makes things worse. The people who are left are going to get down by the windows. Come with us.”

Belle, who had been separated from her friends, followed quietly enough.

In another moment the corridor was empty, and the flames which had been fast eating their way along the hall had reached the elevator shafts. It had all happened in much less time than it takes to tell, but in the brief instant when Billie had paused to rescue Belle, she lost the others. Once in a bedroom, where the air was not so stifling, it was impossible to leave and rush again into the atmosphere outside.

The two girls dashed into the nearest room and closed the door, too stifled to notice that the others, led by level-headed Ben and followed by the crowd of people left standing by the elevator shafts, had rushed into a front room at the end of the hall. In the closets of this room and the one adjoining, they found two fire ropes which this old-fashioned hotel provided for its guests whose rooms were not located near the fire escapes. Those who were not able to slide down the ropes were lowered in a chair, and the others, with a foot twisted around the rope and grasping a wet towel to keep the palm of the hand from blistering, slid down. In the darkness it was impossible to recognize faces, and it was not until they were all safe on the ground that they missed Billie Campbell.

Then poor Miss Campbell, who had been admirably calm during the whole fearful experience, fainted away, and Elinor, now entirely restored by the fresh air, was left to take care of her.

Nancy and Mary followed the four boys to the rescue. Tears were rolling down Nancy’s cheeks and Mary was as pale as death. Each girl had her own peculiar way of showing how much she had come to love their new friend, Billie.

In the meantime, Billie, herself, was looking ruefully down into the darkness from the window of a room on the third floor and Belle was indulging in a fit of real hysterics.

“How dare you bring me here?” she screamed hoarsely, stamping her foot. “I might have been saved if you had let me alone, and here we are trapped! I always hated you and now I detest you with my whole soul.”

“I thought the others were in here,” said Billie apologetically.

“Thought! Thought!” screamed the wretched girl. “You wanted me to die. You wanted me to lose my beauty.”

“You haven’t any to lose just now,” answered Billie. “You look more like the Medusa of the snaky locks——”

“Oh, oh!” wept Belle, too angry to articulate.

“You may console yourself this much,” went on Billie. “If you die, I shall die with you, but I am going to do my best to save you and myself, too.”

“Help! Help!” screamed Belle from the window, not taking any notice. But her voice was lost in the wild clamor which came up from below.

Then she flung herself flat on the floor in an agony of sobs.

“It’s better to pray than to cry, Belle. Crying won’t help and we are in a pretty warm place. If you were only a sport, it might do a lot of good.”

Belle crawled to the window and leaned out. The air in the room was becoming unbearable.

In the meantime, Billie’s thoughts were working rapidly. There were the sheets, but there wasn’t time to tear them into strips and knot the strips together. Besides, she didn’t believe they would reach halfway to the ground.

“I am afraid we’ll have to climb it,” she said.

“Climb what?”

“Climb up the side of the shutter to the roof. This is the top floor. The flames haven’t reached the roof yet.”

“But what good will the roof do us?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’s better than this. Come on.”

“I tell you I can’t climb. I never did such a thing in my life.”

“You’ll just have to begin then,” said Billie sternly. “Shall I go first, or would you rather do it?”

“I’ll go—no, you go.”

“I’ll help you,” said Billie, hoisting herself to the window ledge. “Now, don’t look down. Just imagine you are only a few feet from the ground and that it’s a very easy stunt. If you decide beforehand that you can’t do it, why, of course, you can’t. But it will be much easier than staying here to be burned alive in the next few minutes.”

Delivering herself of this boyish but unimpeachable logic, Billie kicked off her slippers and swung herself onto the shutter. Just for one brief instant a sickening nausea came over her as she looked down into the darkness.

Then her fingers grasped the cornice of the roof and, pulling herself up with her two arms, as she had learned to do on the parallel bars in the gymnasium—only in this instance the shutter made a very uncertain elbow rest—she scrambled onto the roof.

“All right, Belle,” she called. “It’s much easier than I thought. Take off your slippers and come ahead, and don’t forget to look up and not down.”

Belle obeyed in sullen silence. She was as determined as Billie not to be burned alive, but her luxurious and self-indulgent nature revolted against this uncomfortable and dangerous method of getting out of the difficulty. However, there was nothing else to do, so she swung out on the shutter as Billie had done, only this time Billie, with all the strength in her body was holding the shutter rigid.

As Belle clung on with her hands and her little pink toes, which she had stuck into the interstices of the shutter, she suddenly looked down. Her grasp weakened and she gave a shriek so piercing that Billie almost slipped headlong over the side of the roof, but she grasped Belle’s slackening wrist.

“Take a breath,” she said, in a trembling voice. “You can do it, if you only make up your mind to.”

“I’ll never, never forgive you,” cried Belle, “and if I live through to-night, I’ll pay you back.”

“All right,” answered Billie calmly, seeing all at once that anger appeared to give Belle new strength, “only I advise you to get onto this roof first.”

Another moment and Belle had clambered over the cornice and was stretched out breathless on the roof.

“I would much rather have had a baby to look after,” thought Billie, as she looked contemptuously down at the other girl.

“We had better not lose any more time now, Belle,” she said aloud. “If you have got your breath and your nerve back, come ahead.”

Belle pulled herself wearily up and followed.

“My feet are all splinters,” she complained, “and my hands are torn and bleeding.”

“’Tis the voice of the lobster: I heard him declare
‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair,’”

repeated Billie, half laughing and half sobbing that this foolish verse should have flashed through her brain at this strange time.

The two girls hurried along the roof toward the front. It was plain that in the scramble to save the lives of the hotel guests there had been no time to save the building, and when the young girls turned the corner of the roof and looked for a moment across the broad expanse of ocean not a hundred yards away it seemed to them that they were alone in the whole world.

“What are we going to do now?” demanded Belle.

“I don’t know yet,” answered Billie patiently.

The roof was hot under her feet and they could hear the crackling of flames as they hastened along the edge to the other side.

The rest of that fearful adventure seemed like a dream to Billie afterwards.

As they turned the corner of the house a voice called hoarsely:

“Who can tie a rope?”

Billie remembered to have replied vaguely and politely that she could tie a rope. A man emerged from behind the chimney with a long rope, but she hardly noticed at the time that he had only one arm.

“It may not be long enough,” he said, “but tie it and we’ll take the risk. It’s our only chance.”

Billie knotted the rope around the chimney. The man examined the knot carefully, pulled it with his one hand, and then threw it over the side of the house.

“I’ll go first,” said Belle quietly, and Billie looked at her with amazement.

“Humph!” said the man. “You are brave. Can you do it?”

“Yes,” answered Belle, “I can do anything. Help me over the side.”

“It’s going to hurt,” he observed, as he twisted the rope around her foot and showed her how to slide down. “It’s going to take all the skin off your hands and feet and maybe cut to the bone.”

Belle made no reply to this cheerful prediction. She had already started down the rope.

As Billie watched her disappear in the dark, the man said abruptly:

“Did a number of girls and a white-haired woman in a red automobile come here this evening?”

Billie hesitated.

“I believe so,” she said.

“Do you know so?” asked the man insistently.

“Yes.”

“Did you see one of them leave a rosewood box at the clerk’s desk?”

Billie made a great effort to remember. Then, suddenly, the case of jewels loomed up in her mind. She had forgotten all about them.

“Billie, Billie,” called a voice from below.

“Yes,” she answered, looking over the roof.

“She’s here,” shouted Ben, from the top of the ladder, which reached only to the second story.

“All right,” called the one-armed man on the roof. “We have a rope here. We’ll swing down to the ladder.”

The next thing Billie remembered she was surrounded by a crowd of her friends at the foot of the ladder. The girls were weeping and her Cousin Helen was giving vent to hysterical expressions of relief and thankfulness. The wet sand felt cool and soft to the parched soles of her bare feet, and she tried to smile; but she really had quite forgotten what it was all about. Some one close by her groaned and sobbed alternately, and a sickening feeling came over her when she saw a girl stretched on a blanket almost at her feet. The girl’s hands were torn and bleeding and her pale blue silk kimono was covered with blood. Down one cheek was a long, bloody mark and to complete her grotesque and terrible aspect, at least a dozen little red rubber devils’ horns stood upright all over her head.

The next thing Billie remembered was huddling into her own beloved red motor car with the others, while some one took them somewhere, and all the time in her ears she heard a man’s voice saying:

“Where is that box of jewels?”

And her own voice replied:

“Under the ruins of the Shell Island Hotel.”