The boy's fingers dug into his palms and he stepped quickly back into his place, a flush of shame mantling his cheeks. Had any of the other fellows noticed? he wondered. His questioning glance swept along the line and was suddenly arrested by the face of Dale Tompkins, who stood a little beyond.
Dale was not looking at him; on the contrary, he was staring back into the murky gloom of the big room with an expression of such desperate anxiety and fear that Gibson's heart leaped, and instinctively he turned his head to see what new peril threatened. When he glanced back, after a scrutiny that revealed nothing unexpected, Tompkins had disappeared.
"He's gone!" gasped the boy, his surprise mingled with a touch of envy. "He's cut out and got away!"
But Dale had not run away. At that very moment, instead of flying panic-stricken to a window, as Bob supposed, he was groping his way through the darkness toward the farther end of the smoke-filled hall. As he passed behind the line of scouts and pushed on through the thinning throng of frightened people, fear filled his soul and brought a tortured look into his smarting eyes--that fear for another which is often so much more gripping than the fear for self.
Ages ago, it seemed to the anxious boy, Ranny Phelps had disappeared in this same direction and had not returned. Dale had caught a disjointed word or two about water-buckets, but where they were or to what use Ranny meant to put them he did not know. With growing alarm he had watched and waited, and then, unable to stand the suspense another instant, he slipped out of the line and went to seek his friend.
As he passed the double doors the smoke seemed to thicken, causing him to choke and sputter. Where was it coming from, he wondered dazedly. It was as if great volumes were pouring freely into the hall, yet the doors to the corridor had been closed from the first.
He stumbled over a chair and nearly fell. Recovering, his outstretched hands struck the wall, and he began to feel his way along it. Presently his fingers gripped the edge of a door-casing, and he staggered back as a fresh burst of suffocating fumes caught his lungs with a smothering clutch.
For an instant he stood there reeling. Then in a flash he remembered the coat-room, remembered the narrow pair of stairs leading down from one corner with a row of red fire-buckets on a bench beside it. These were the buckets Ranny had come for. The door to the stairs was--open!