CHAPTER XII.

IN PERIL OF HIS LIFE.

In the meantime, outside the building suspense had reached almost the breaking point. The Scouts still stood steady and staunch, but their faces were white and drawn. When the crash that announced the falling floor came, a man, wrought beyond the bearing point, cried out:

"There goes his last chance, poor kid!"

"Shut up, can't you," breathed a fierce, tense voice in his ear the next instant. "Don't you see his father and mother back there?"

It was only too true. Attracted by the excitement, Rob's father and mother had driven to the scene in their car. They reached it just in time to hear of Rob's heroic act. Now, white-faced and trembling, they sat hand in hand wretchedly waiting for news. As time passed and the flames rose higher without a sign of the daring lad, their hearts almost ceased to beat. Seconds seemed hours, minutes eternity.

Then suddenly came a fearful cry. On the roof there had appeared the figure of Rob with a bundle which the crowd readily guessed to be the janitor's child clasped tightly in his arms. The flames, leaping from the cupola, illumined his form brightly and showed his pale, tense face. Thwarted in his effort to descend by the stairway, Rob had managed to reach the roof through a scuttle.

"He's done it! Hurrah! The boy's saved the baby!" went up an ear-splitting cry from the unthinking in the crowd.

The others knew only too well that the reason that Rob had appeared on the roof betokened the terrible fact that his escape had been cut off. He was making a last desperate stand, with the flames drawing closer, and threatening to burst through the roof at any moment.

Every eye in that crowd was fixed on the solitary figure on the roof.

"Ladders! Get ladders," yelled the foreman, hoping against hope that one could be found tall enough to reach to that height.

Rob came forward to the cornice, and looked over as if gauging the height. They saw him shake his head. Then he looked behind him. Alas, there, too, all hope of escape was cut off. Between himself and an iron fire-escape at the back of the building, tongues of flame were now shooting through the roof.

"He's shouting something. Keep still, for heaven's sake!" came Merritt's voice suddenly.

A death-like silence followed. Then above the roar and crackle came a faint sound. It was Rob calling out some commands.

"A rope!--shoot it up here," was all they could distinguish.

Merritt darted forward and stood below the walls.

"Louder, Rob! Louder!" he besought.

"A rope! Bow--arrow--shoot it up!" came Rob's voice, audible to few, but his chum Merritt was the only one that understood. He was back among the Scouts in a flash. He seized Paul Perkins by the shoulder.

"Paul, your house is nearest. Run! Run as you never ran before and get your archery bow and lots of arrows."

Paul didn't stop to ask the meaning of this strange command, but darted off at top speed, the crowd opening for him.

"Ropes! Ropes and lots of string!" shouted Merritt next, appealing to the throng. Those who were closest realized that a plan to save Rob--although what it was they couldn't imagine--was to be tried. Neighbors of the Academy ran off at once and in a few minutes the Scouts were busy, under Merritt's directions, knotting ropes together to form one long line.

When this had been done, Merritt measured with his eye the height of the Academy walls. Then he set them to work knotting light twine together in as long a line as they could make. By this time Paul was back with the bow and arrow that the Scouts used at archery practice.

"Give it here," ordered Merritt tersely if ungrammatically.

What he was going to try was a repetition of the trick that had rescued some of the Eagle Patrol when they were imprisoned on the top of Ruby Glow in the Adirondacks on their memorable treasure hunt.

With a hand that was far from steady, Merritt knotted the end of the light string to an arrow. Then, placing the arrow in position, he drew the bow. It was plain enough to the dullest-witted now what he meant to do. His plan was to shoot the arrow, with the string attached, up on the roof where Rob could seize it. This done, it would be possible for the latter--if he had time--to haul up the rope, knot it to a chimney and slide down. It was a daring, desperate plan, but none other offered, and the fact that Rob had suggested it showed that his nerve was not likely to fail him in what might be aptly described as a supreme test.

Amid a dead silence Merritt let the arrow fly. It shot through the air, but instead of reaching the roof it struck the wall and rebounded. A cry went up from the watching crowd as it fell, having failed to accomplish its purpose. If Rob's face changed as he stood up there on the edge of the fire-illumined roof, it was not visible to those below him, keen as his disappointment must have been.

But Merritt was almost sobbing as he picked up the arrow and fitted it afresh for another trial. As he drew the bow with every ounce of strength he possessed, his lips moved in prayer that his next effort might be successful. At any moment now, the foreman of the fire-fighters told him, the roof might collapse, carrying with it the brave boy and his childish burden.

On the outskirts of the crowd, too, a white-faced man and woman were imploring Divine Providence to nerve Merritt's arm and aim. For one instant the bowstring was drawn taut till it seemed that the bow must snap under the terrific pressure.

Then suddenly the string fell slack, the arrow whizzed through the air and a mighty cheer split the sky as it winged true and swift to the roof top, falling almost at Rob's feet. Hand over hand he drew in the string, and at last he had hauled up enough rope to knot one end fast about some ornamental stone work at a corner of the building.

While doing this he had laid the child down. Now he was seen to pick her up again, and holding her in his arms for an instant he appeared to consider. To slide down that rope he must have at least one arm free. How was he going to do it? The crowd almost forebore to breathe as they sensed what the boy on the roof was puzzling over.

It was Rob's scout training that solved the problem--one of life and death for him--as this same training is doing all over the world for lads in every grade of life to-day. He was seen to give the child some emphatic instructions and then throw her over his left shoulder much as he might have done with a bag of meal. In this position the child's head hung down between his shoulders. Her legs were across his chest.

Seizing the baby's left arm so that it came over his right shoulder, Rob extended his left hand between its knees and grasped the little one's wrist firmly. In this position she was held perfectly securely in what all Boy Scouts know as "The Fireman's Lift," one of the most useful accomplishments a Boy Scout can master.

This done, the most difficult, dangerous part of Rob's task came. He had to slide down that rope with his burden on his shoulder with only his right arm and his legs to depend on for a grip. But it had to be done. Without hesitation he swung himself from the coping and gripped the rope.

For one terrible instant he shot down for a foot or so before he succeeded in checking his downward plunge. But his knees gripped the rope and his right arm stood the strain, although he felt as if it must snap.

How he reached the ground Rob never knew. Those last terrible moments on the roof had come very near to breaking his nerve. He was conscious of a sudden flare of light and a crash as his feet touched the ground. It crossed his mind hazily that part of the roof must have fallen in--perhaps the part on which he had been standing. Then came a rush of feet, shouts, cries, and arms flung about him, and through it all Rob could hear his mother's glad cry of relief after the awful tension she had endured. He tried to say something and failed, and then everything raced round and round him at breakneck speed.

"He's fainting!" he was conscious that somebody was shouting, and he could hear himself, only it seemed like somebody else, saying:

"No, I'm all right," and then everything grew blank to the Boy Scout who had won, through "Being Prepared" for a great emergency.