“Oh, do not leave me!” she pleaded: “I have no one in the wide world to help me except you.”
“I shall not be beyond call. You see those shanties there; if possible we must keep them from burning, or the fire will come too near for safety.” Then, starting forward, he cried, “Who will volunteer to keep the fire back? All must see that if those buildings burn we shall be in danger.”
Several men stepped forward, and with hats and anything that would hold water they began to wet the old rookeries. But the fiery storm swooped steadily down on them, and their efforts were as futile as if they had tried to beat back the wind. Suddenly a mass of flame leaped upon the buildings, and in a moment they were all ablaze.
“Into the lake, quick!” cried Dennis, and all rushed for the cool waters.
Lifting Christine from the sand, and passing his arm around her trembling, shivering form, he plunged through the breakers, and the crowd pressed after him. Indeed they pushed him so far out in the cold waves that he nearly lost his footing, and for a few moments Christine lost hers altogether, and added her cries to those of the terror-stricken multitude. But pushing in a little nearer the shore, he held her firmly and said with the confidence that again inspired hope: “Courage, Miss Ludolph. With God’s help I will save you yet.”
Even as she clung to him in the water, she looked into his face. He was regarding her so kindly, so pitifully, that a great and generous impulse, the richest, ripest fruit of her human love, throbbed at her heart, and faltered from her lips—“Mr. Fleet, I am not worthy of this risk on your part. If you will leave me you can save your own life, and your life is worth so much more than mine!”
True and deep must have been the affection that could lead Christine Ludolph to say such words to any human being. There was a time when, in her creed, all the world existed but to minister to her. But she was not sorry to see the look of pained surprise which came into Dennis’s face and to hear him say, very sadly: “Miss Ludolph, I did not imagine that you could think me capable of that. I had the good fortune to rescue Miss Brown last night, at greater peril than this, and do you think I would leave you?”
“You are a true knight, Mr. Fleet,” she said, humbly, “and the need or danger of every defenceless woman is alike a sacred claim upon you.”
Dennis was about to intimate that, though this was true in knightly creed, still among all the women in the world there might be a preference, when a score of horses, driven before the fire, and goaded by the burning cinders, rushed down the beach, into the water, right among the human fugitives.
Again went up the cry of agony and terror. Some were no doubt stricken down not to rise again. In the melee Dennis pushed out into deeper water, where the frantic animals could not plunge upon him. A child floated near, and he snatched it up. As soon as the poor brutes became quiet, clasping Christine with his right arm and holding up the child with the other, he waded into shallow water.
The peril was now perhaps at its height, and all were obliged to wet their heads, to keep even their hair from singeing. Those on the beach threw water on each other without cessation. Many a choice bit of property—it might be a piano, or an express-wagon loaded with the richest furs and driven to the beach as a place of fancied security—now caught fire, and added to the heat and consternation.
When this hour of extreme danger had passed, standing with the cold billows of the lake breaking round him, and the billows of fire still rolling overhead, Dennis began to sing in his loud, clear voice:
“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high.”
Voice after voice joined in, some loud and strong, but others weak and trembling—the pitiful cry of poor terror-stricken women to the only One who it seemed could help them in their bitter extremity. Never before were those beautiful words sung in such accents of clinging, touching faith. Its sweet cadence was heard above the roar of the flames and the breakers.
Christine could only cling weeping to Dennis.
When the hymn ceased, in harshest discord the voice of a half-drunken man grated on their ears.
“An’ what in bloody blazes does yer Jasus burn us all up for, I’d like to know. Sure an’ he’s no right to send us to hell before our time.”
“Oh, hush! hush!” cried a dozen voices, shocked and pained.
“Divil a bit will I hush, sure; an’ haven’t I as good a right to have me say as that singin’ parson!”
“You are an Irishman, are you not?” said Dennis, now venturing out of the water.
“Yis! what have ye got to say agin it?” asked the man, belligerent at once.
“Did you ever know an Irishman refuse to do what a lady asked of him?”
“Faith no, and I niver will.”
“Then this lady, who is sick and suffering, asks you to please keep still, and I will be still also; so that’s fair.”
The Irishman scratched his head a moment, and said in a quieter tone, “Since ye spake so civil and dacent, I’ll do as ye sez; and here’s to the leddy’s health;” and he finished a bottle of whiskey, which he soon laid him out on
