He cast a rapid glance about the room. Its furniture was scanty enough not to require a very long investigation to itemize it. There was a rickety table, on which stood the smoky lamp, two decrepit chairs and the frowsy cot. But none of these seemed to Jack to be what he wanted.
While he still hesitated he felt a crash beneath him. The house shook and Jack knew that this betokened the fall of one of the lower floors. At almost the same instant the panels of the door began to blister, and smoke rolled into the room through a crack under the portal. The boy could now hear distinctly also the roar and crackle of the flames, and it was suffocatingly hot.
“I must do something and do it quick, too,” he exclaimed.
But what? He thrust his head out of the window and shouted at the top of his voice. But above the roar and confusion in the street his feeble cries did not travel far.
He looked about him despairingly. Was there nothing he could do? Nothing to save himself from a fiery tomb?
All at once he gave a glad cry. He had seen something that gave him a gleam of hope. From under the fusty blankets on the bed he had just glimpsed the protruding end of a plank. It gave him an inspiration.
Throwing back the greasy coverings of the cot he found that it was formed by placing planks across trestles, and one of these boards was just about the right length for the purpose to which he designed to put it.
His weakness forgotten in his excitement, the boy lugged the board across the room and thrust it out of the window. It just reached the opposite casement, resting its outer end on the sill beyond by a perilously narrow margin. But it was his only means of escape, and Jack didn’t hesitate an instant to clamber up on the board and begin the passage across the shaft.
Before he set out to crawl across his frail bridge he cast a backward glance into the room he was leaving. As he did so the flames burst through the panels of the door, and he was conscious of a puff of heat like that from the open door of an oven.
As he moved along and neared its center, the board cracked and bent ominously. It was not particularly thick, and Jack was no lightweight. The cold perspiration stood out on his face as he thought of what would happen if his slender support was to snap under him.