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.