man sitting, a tall, handsome young fellow of twenty-five, perhaps.
Stone liked the man's face, and he liked the way the flannel shirt was
cut so as to leave the full throat free. The manner in which the simple
scarf was knotted and its ends tucked into the shirt he noticed also;
and he saw that the young fellow had insisted on bringing his black
slouch hat with him into the dining-room, having hung it on the back of
the next chair. When this seat was given to Stone, the hat was promptly
transferred to the chair on the other side of the owner. Stone made up
his mind that his neighbor was a ranchman of some sort, who had come
East on business.
It does not take long for two lonely men to get acquainted; and before
he had eaten his green corn, Stone knew all about his neighbor at table,
and the neighbor knew something about him.
"I sized you up when you come in," the young fellow said, "an' I took
stock in you from the start. Somehow I kind o' thought you was one of
Uncle Sam's boys, though o' course I didn't 'low you was a sailor. I
never see a sailor till this mornin', when I went down on the dock to
get news of this _Touraine_ steamer, an' the sailor down there was a
Frenchman, an' not like you, not by a jugful. I suppose, now, Uncle
Sam's sailors are like his other boys I've seen at home often. There's
Dutchmen that ain't bad men, an' I've seen Dagoes you could tie to, and
sometimes a greaser, now and then--not but what they's powerful skase,
greasers you can trust--but Uncle Sam's boys are white men every time."
The young fellow was Clay Magruder. He was a cowboy, as Stone had
supposed, and he was in New York on a mission of the highest importance
to himself. He was waiting for the girl he wanted to marry, and she was
expected to arrive the next morning on the French steamer.
"The grub here ain't so bad, is it?" Magruder said, as the repast drew
to an end. "O' course it ain't like what we get at home. I don't find
nowhere no beef that's equal to the beef we've been gettin' right along
now for two years, ever since I've been with Old Man Pettigrew. The
Hash-knife Outfit always has the best cookin' on the trail. It's jest
notorious for it. Things here in New York is good enough, but the flavor
don't take hold of you like it does at home; an' their coffee East is
poor stuff, ain't it? It don't bite you like coffee should."
After dinner they went into the smoking-room of the hotel, and Stone
offered a cigar to his new friend.
"No, thank you," he responded, taking a small brier-wood pipe out of
his trousers-pocket. "I don't go much on cigars; I can git more solid
comfort out of a pipe, I reckon." After he had filled his pipe and
pulled at it half a dozen times, he said to Stone, suddenly: "Say! is
there any show in town to-night? I've got a night off, you know, and
I've allus heerd that for shows New York could lay over everything in
sight. You've been to this town before, haven't you?"
Stone admitted that this was not his first visit to New York.
"I reckoned so," was Clay Magruder's comment. "An' so you know your way
here, an' I don't; there's too many trails crossin' for me to keep to
the road. Suppose we go to the show together--ef there is a show in
town?"
Stone bought an evening paper, and looked over the list of amusements.
He wondered what would best suit the tastes of his new friend.
"There's Deadwood Dick's Wild Western Exhibition at Niblo's--" he began.
"Deadwood Dick?" interrupted the cowboy, in great contempt; "he's a holy
show, he is. He's a fraud; that's what he is. An' is he the only thing
we can take in to-night?"
"Oh no," the sailor replied. "There are half a dozen other things to
see. There's a comic opera at the Garden Theatre, with a variety show up
in the roof garden afterwards."
"A comic opera--singing, and funny business, and pretty girls, I
suppose?" said the Westerner. "I reckon we'd might as well go
there--unless you'd rather go somewhere else."
"The comic opera and the roof garden will just suit me," Stone
responded.
They were fortunate in getting good seats at the theatre, where they
arrived as the curtain was rising on the first act of "Patience." Even
in midsummer the attire of Stone's new friend attracted some attention,
and a group of pretty girls in the row behind them nudged each other as
he came in and giggled. In their hearts they were glad to look at so
handsome a man.
During the first act Magruder's face was a study for Stone. It was
evident that the cowboy failed wholly to understand the narrow and
insular satire of "Patience." When the curtain fell at last, he could
contain himself no longer.
"I never see such a fool play," he said. "There ain't no sense in makin'
believe that one fellow could round up a bunch of girls that way. It's
the plumb-stupidest show I've seen for years and years. It's bad as
Deadwood Dick 'most. 'Patience' they call it? Well, I 'ain't got none to
see no more of it. What's this roof garden you told me about?"
So Stone took him up to the roof garden, and they were glad to get again
into the open air, baked as the atmosphere was even at the top of the
building. They had a drink and a smoke while they listened to the music.
When the variety show began on the little stage, Stone went forward in
time to secure advantageous positions for Magruder and himself. Early on
the programme was a French song by a highly-colored young lady wearing
an enormous hat.
"That's a good enough song," the cowboy declared, "but what sort of a
lingo is it she's singin' it in? Why isn't plain United States good
enough for songs? Not but what she's a pretty girl, too, and lively on
her feet."
The part of the performance which excited Clay Magruder's warmest
appreciation was the serpentine dance of Mademoiselle Eloise. When he
beheld the coiling draperies of that graceful young woman curving about
in picturesque and unexpected convolutions, and heightened in effect by
the changing colors of the lime-lights directed upon the stage, his
enthusiasm rose to a height.
"That's _some_!" he cried. "It reminds me of an Eyetalian gal I saw
dance once in Cheyenne. She was a daisy, too; but this is bigger. They's
no doubt about it, this is a heap bigger."
Magruder joined in accomplishing the inevitable recall and the
repetition of a part of the dance. Perhaps this was the reason why the
next two or three numbers of the programme seemed to him to be less
interesting. At all events, both the cowboy and the sailor tired of the
entertainment. So they made their way through the crowd and down to the
street.
As they walked back to the hotel Magruder told Stone what had brought
him to New York. It was to meet the _Touraine_ on her expected arrival
in the morning, and to persuade one of the passengers to marry him.
"She's jest got to marry me," he said, earnestly. "I can't get along
without her any longer. She's a sort of governess to Old Man Pettigrew's
sister's kids--learns them to read and play the pianner. They was all in
Miles City last winter, and that was when I first see her. I made up my
mind right off on the spot that there was Mrs. Clay Magruder if I could
get her. And I'm here now to get her if I can. She's as pretty as a
picture--better'n that, too, for I never see no chromo half as
good-lookin' as her. Once last winter they was 'most a blizzard;
leastways the wind set back on its hind-legs and howled. You ought to
have seen her then, with the color in her cheeks! An' everything was
froze stiff, and she was skeered of fallin'. Why, she teetered along
jest like a chicken with a jag." And he laughed out loud at the
recollection. "She'll be here in the mornin', and you shall see her. I'm
goin' to be down on that dock good an' early to-morrow, and no French
sailor ain't goin' to stand me off."
As they drew near to the hotel, Magruder remarked: "Say! ain't they a
jag-factory somewheres round here? Come in and have one with me."
Stone went with him, and they drank the young lady's health, Magruder
expatiating on her charms and on the happiness that awaited him when he
should marry her. Then they crossed the street to the hotel and went up
to their rooms.
As it happened, the room of Clay Magruder was exactly opposite John
Stone's, so it was at their own doors that they parted for the night
with a hearty grasp of the hand.
The sailor found the air of his room stifling. He threw wide the window
and stood for a while looking out over the heated city as it lay around
him in the darkness. He wondered what the girl was like whom Magruder
had come East to meet, and he caught himself almost envying the cowboy.
Then he sighed unconsciously and made ready for bed. As he wound up his
watch he saw that it was nearly half-past eleven. Five minutes
afterwards he was asleep.
He had been asleep but five minutes, as it seemed to him, when he was
waked slowly with a slight difficulty in breathing, and with the feeling
that all was not well. While he was still drowsy, he was conscious of a
crackling sound like the snapping of dry twigs. When he opened his eyes
he found that they smarted. The first long breath that he drew filled
his lungs with thin smoke. In an instant he was wide awake. The meaning
of the crackling and the snapping was not doubtful. The hotel was on
fire.
He sprang out of bed and opened the door of his room. The corridor was
full of smoke, and the sound of the flames was louder. At the bend in
the hall where the stairs were, sharp tongues of flame were licking
around the corner. Stone saw that his retreat that way was cut off, and
that he must rely on the windows for escape. He crossed to the door
opposite, pounded at it heavily, and cried "Fire! Fire! Get up at once!"
till Clay Magruder answered. The floor of the corridor was hot beneath
his feet as he went back to his own room, closed the door, and dressed
himself as swiftly as he could, the murmur of the fire growing nearer
and nearer.
When he was still in his shirt-sleeves he stepped again to the corridor
and called across to Magruder.
The door opposite opened, and the cowboy appeared in it, half-dressed.
"The stairs are on fire," cried Stone; "we can't get out that way. We
must try the windows. Take your sheets and your blankets and come in
here."
"I wish I'd a couple of lariats here," said Magruder, as he went back
for the bed-linen.
The air in the hall was now thick and suffocating, and the stairs at the
corner were a furnace of fierce flames. Here and there thin threads of
smoke were rising from the floor of the corridor.
The cowboy reappeared in his doorway, with his arms full of bedclothes.
"Come in here quick, so that I can get this door shut and keep out the
smoke," said the sailor, standing back to leave the doorway open.
As Magruder stepped out of his room, the floor of the corridor gave way
with a crash, and a red-hot gulf yawned between the two rooms. Stone
leaned far forward to try and save his new friend. But the falling of
the floor was too sudden, and Magruder went down into the roaring
furnace below, from which the flames sprang up fiercely. In a moment he
was lost to sight in the seething fire. Stone stood stock-still for a
second, bent over the blazing opening, with his arm out-stretched until
the heat scorched it. Then he rose to his feet swiftly and shut the door
behind him.
His own room was now full of smoke, and he knew that the door would be
on fire in less than a minute. He threw open the window and looked down,
seeing at once that his bedding alone would be useless, as it would take
him down two stories at the most, while the fire had already broken out
at the front of the building. He discovered that there was a ledge or
narrow cornice running around the house just on the end of his floor. He
stepped out upon this, and closed the window behind him. As he did so,
the flames burst through from the corridor into his room.
Standing outside of his window on the narrow ledge, which gave him a
scant foothold, he saw in front of him on his right what he had not
before observed--a tall tower with an illuminated clock face. The hands
pointed to four minutes past midnight. From the street below there
arose a confused murmur of noises--shouts and cries of command, the
rattle of heavy wheels as the engines rushed up, the regular rhythmic
beat of the pumps as they got into play, the hissing of steam as a dozen
streams of water curved upward and smote the burning building. The
foliage of the trees which lined the curb was so thick that Stone could
not see the sidewalk just below him, and apparently those in charge of
operations had not seen him.
The sailor had faced death before--he had weathered many a fierce gale
at sea; he had been at Samoa during the hurricane; he had been overboard
for an hour once in the Bay of Biscay--and he was not afraid to die. He
recalled his sensations when he believed himself to be drowning, and he
remembered that his dominant thought had been that such a death then and
there was needless and served no purpose. On that occasion he was more
or less passive, being spent with the struggle against the waves; at
present he was strong and ready to make a fight for his life. Then he
had to contend with water, and now he knew that water was his chief
hope.
At that moment there came a louder roar from far down in the street
below: the water-tower had arrived. It was speedily erected and in
service, and from its long trunk a thick stream of water was forced into
the blazing hotel perhaps fifty feet from where Stone was standing. He
watched it at work, and then he raised his eyes and again caught sight
of the illuminated dial, whereon the hands now pointed to seven minutes
after midnight.
Stone wondered whether the firemen would be able to get the better of
the flames. He doubted it, but he wished that he could take part in the
fight. It was rather the helplessness of his position than its
fearfulness that he felt most keenly. He was in danger, and the danger
was deepening with every minute of delay, but he could do nothing. The
ledge on which he was standing was barely a foot wide, and it was
perhaps ten feet long. Its length measured the width of his room, which
projected a yard or more beyond the main line of the building. Stone
moved cautiously to the right till he came to the end of the ledge, in
the hope that it continued around the side, and that by following it he
might pass along the whole front of the hotel, and perhaps find some way
to escape to the roof of the house next door.
But the hope was futile, for the slight cornice shrank away as it turned
back till it was barely an inch wide. The sailor was used to an insecure
footing at a great height, and his nerves were steady; but he knew that
it was certain destruction for him to try to advance in that direction.
With his back pressed tight to the wall, he glided along to the window,
now lighted up by the flames which filled his room. He pushed past it to
the left until he came to the end of the ledge on that side, finding
that the projection ceased on the one hand as it had on the other. He
felt himself a prisoner, held fast, with little hope of rescue; neither
to the right nor to the left could he move; behind him was the wall of
the blazing hotel, and before him was a sheer drop of sixty feet to the
street below. He glanced down for an instant, and then raised his head
again. To the right, in the distance, was the clock-tower, and it was
now nine minutes past twelve. He wondered if the clock had stopped
suddenly, for it seemed to him nearly an hour since he had awaked to
find himself in peril of his life.
He thought of Magruder, and he wondered why the man who had hopes and
joys before him should be cut off, while the man who had little to live
for should be given a chance for his life. That the cowboy had perished
in the flames he had no doubt; and in a flash his imagination bore him
outside of the exigencies of the moment, and he had a vision of the
_Touraine_ making her way past Sandy Hook, and drawing near to Staten
Island and anchoring there, too far from the city for its passengers to
see the glare of the conflagration. Yet the fire was one to be seen from
afar, for there was a sullen roar, and the roof of a wing of the hotel
fell in. A myriad of sparks was blasted upward, and the crowd in the
street raised a loud shout of warning. Stone looked down, and he saw a
woman at a window of the floor below him; she was shrieking with terror,
and at last she gave a wild spring forward. He beheld her crash through
the branches of the trees, and he heard her body strike the sidewalk.
There was a yell of horror from the crowd, and then silence. A few
seconds later Stone caught the quick clang of an ambulance bell in the
side street. He counted the strokes automatically until they died away
in the distance. His ear was so strained to catch this sound that he
heard the rattle of a train stopping at the station of the elevated
railroad only a block away, and he seized even the shrill squeak of the
brakes as they grated against the wheels. Then he aroused himself, and
wondered why he had noted such trifles. Turning his head, he found the
single eye of the clock-tower still beaming at him. He blinked stupidly
before he saw that it was now thirteen minutes after twelve.
More engines had arrived in the street below, and another
hook-and-ladder truck. Several small ladders had been put up to the
lower windows, and women and children had been carried down in safety.
Stone watched while the firemen tried to raise one of the taller ladders
which might reach to the third or fourth floor. The branches of the
trees were so close that the men found it impossible to get this longer
ladder into position. A man was sent up into the tree, and he was
cutting away the branches, when flames burst out of the nearest window.
A torrent of water was at once directed into the window, while a second
stream splashed down upon the tree and made a watery shield for the
fireman, who went on lopping off the limbs. He labored swiftly, but the
fire was swifter still. At almost the same time the flames burst forth
from three or four other of the lower windows.
Stone had been noting every effort of the men below. At first he had not
been seen. But after the man had cut away a few of the branches of the
tree, two or three of the firemen caught sight of the sailor. They
shouted to him, but in the roar of the fire behind him and below him he
could not make out their words. A captain gave a sudden command, and two
men sprang forward with short scaling-ladders, which they succeeded in
hooking to the second-story window immediately below the ledge on which
he was standing. Looking down, he could see the heads of these men as
they climbed the ladders, their bodies being foreshortened into
invisibility. The men could not get above the second story, for the fire
was gushing forth as though the window were the mouth of hell. The smoke
rose black and dense, enshrouding Stone.
He saw that it was useless to hope that they could now get a ladder up
to him; the flames would not give them time. The wall behind him was
becoming hotter, and the heat had broken the glass of the window of his
room. The fire was creeping along the roof above his head, and every now
and again it peered over the edge at him, as though seeing how far it
had still to go before it could grasp him. The smoke from below was
thickening, and threatened to choke him. Through its haze he could see
the cyclops eye of the clock-tower gloating over his inevitable fate.
The hands on the illuminated dial had slowly crept forward, and it was
now nearly twenty minutes past twelve.
Stone knew that his position was untenable for many seconds longer. At
any moment the wall might fall back and bury him in the blazing ruins.
To remain was impossible; and there seemed no way of escape. A crash
shook the building, and then another; and he guessed that two of the
floors had fallen in. He slid along again to the end of the narrow ledge
and tried to peer around the corner, in the vague hope that there might
be some possible means of escape. He found that he could not twist his
head far enough to see anything while his back was flat against the
wall. To turn was to risk a fall to the pavement below. He looked down
fearlessly, and calculated his chances if he missed his footing.
Immediately beneath him the tree was taller than its fellows, and its
foliage was thicker; it was barely possible that the branches might
break his fall; but the chance was slim. The smoke poured heavily from
the window three feet from him. He hesitated no longer, but turned
slowly and steadily. His nerves were unshaken, and he executed the
manoeuvre in safety. Standing with his face to the wall--which rose
sheer above him, and which gave him no hold for his hands--he was able
to thrust out his head sideways and to look around the corner. What he
saw gave him a thrill of hope.
His room projected perhaps a yard beyond the main line of the building,
forming what might be termed a square bay-window. From his position on
the narrow shelf of marble, which ran around the front of the hotel on
every floor, he thought he could reach forward and touch the main wall
of the building. And here was his one possible chance of escape. In the
corner formed by the junction of the projection and the main line there
was the leader which conducted the rain-water from the roof. It was of
tin only, and in the eyes of the sailor gazing at it with upspringing
hope it seemed frail, insecurely fastened, perhaps rotten. But it
offered a chance, and the only chance, of life, and therefore it was
welcome. Stone prepared to make the best of it.
He gave a final glance around before he made the irrevocable move. He
caught sight of the clock, and he saw that it was twenty-two minutes
after midnight. He reached forward, and he found that the space was
wider than he had thought. It was with the tips of his fingers only that
he could touch the tin pipe; it was beyond the reach of his grasp. Yet
to seize it was the one way to the street below. He did not hesitate. He
stood on his left foot on the very end of the ledge, with his right foot
dangling in space. He made a carefully measured plunge forward, and he
gripped the leader with his left hand and then instantly with his right.
It yielded under the sudden strain, but it did not part. With the habit
of a sailor, he clasped his legs about it, and so eased the pressure.
Then he began slowly to slide down, gaining velocity as he descended.
At every floor there was a shelf of stone like that on which he had
stood outside his window, and through which the tin tube passed. Stone
had therefore to release his feet, and by his hands alone to cling to
the pipe, which spread from the wall with the weight of his body. Then
he clasped his legs again below the ledge and let go one hand after the
other. The tin was broken and jagged here and there, and Stone's flesh
was cut to the bone. But he did not notice this in the tension of his
swift descent.
When he came to the first floor and tried to take a fresh grip with his
legs, he found nothing to clasp with his knees. From there to its
connection with the gutter the pipe went inside the building. Stone hung
from the ledge by his hands, not knowing how far he was above the
sidewalk. The smoke was pouring up from the cellar grating beneath him,
and in a minute he would have suffocated. So he let go.
The drop was ten feet or more, and he came down on a trunk which had
been thrown out of a window. From this he pitched to the sidewalk with
a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. He was dimly conscious of being
lifted gently, and of a brief but painful ride. The sharp clang of the
ambulance bell he felt as though it were a physical blow.
When he came to himself again it was morning, and he was in bed in a
long room with a row of cots on both sides of it, under the slanting
sunbeams.
He lay still, wondering.
The occupant of the next bed was unfolding a newspaper, and Stone heard
him say to the nurse, with an Alsacian accent: "Ve're goin' have nodder
hot day; I vonder how dhose people yust back from Paris on dhe
_Douraine_ vill like dot?"
(1892.)
A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK