With Marlborough to Malplaquet Part 4

Smoke was pouring from almost every window. The ladies were speechless with alarm when they saw the look of despair on the boy's face.

"Don't leave us!" Mary pleaded piteously.

"No, no!" cried George. "We'll find a way yet." But cheerfully as he spoke, in his heart he almost despaired.

It was but a few seconds the three had been in the playroom, but when they looked out into the corridor again, to their horror they found it blazing, the flames leaping towards them with astonishing bounds, carried along by the evening breeze that had sprung up. The sight seemed to drive Mrs. Maynard demented. With a shriek she darted away, sped along the burning pa.s.sage, and before the boy and girl could realize the situation, she had dashed down the blazing staircase. The sound of a crash and a fearful scream reached their ears, telling their own tale. The girl clung to George, her head sank, and she fainted.

Desperate now, the lad placed her on the floor, and, thrusting his head from the window, perceived that he could clamber up the two or three feet of rain spout that ran close by, and gain a position on the roof just overhead. If he could gain that, he thought he might run to a further wing of the building that seemed at present untouched by the fire. But the girl, what of her? He cast his eyes about and descried two or three skipping ropes in a corner. Hastily he tied them end to end, fastened a portion round Mary's waist, his movements hastened by the burst of flame that just then shot into the room. Then clambering desperately to the roof, the rope in his teeth, he got a footing on the parapet, and began to haul up the fainting girl.

Hand over hand he hauled up the cord and its burden. The child was dangling between earth and sky when suddenly a great shout came from below. George glanced down, and there, running with up-turned horror-stricken face, was Matthew Blackett. Help at last! But had it come too late?

CHAPTER IV

THE RESCUE

Matthew stopped short, unable to move a yard further, his eyes fixed upon the slight form hanging so dangerously high above him. It was truly an awful moment for both the lads, a moment never afterwards to be forgotten by either of them. The time of suspense was but seconds; it seemed years. But George, his knees firmly pressed against the low parapet wall that ran along the top in front of the house, had no difficulty in supporting the weight, and not too much in actually hauling up his living burden. Another moment and he had seized one arm with a strong grip; the next he had pulled the child to him on the roof.

"Safe! thank G.o.d!" he murmured, almost breathless with his exertions and still more with his agitation.

Safe! As if to mock him a great tongue of flame shot from the window from which rescuer and rescued had but now emerged, and a cry of despair rose from Matthew below.

"Run for the library!" Blackett shouted, a thought suddenly striking him. "Run, run!" And the boy pointed to a sort of wing, an addition to the mansion recently made by the Squire, and devoted to his books and the extensive and valuable collection of antiquities and curiosities of which he was very proud. This building was connected with the body of the house by only one small arched door, on the ground-floor.

George understood, and cautiously but rapidly edging his way along the broad leaden gutter behind the parapet, he drew the girl, by this time conscious once more, but dazed with fright, to the outlying portion of the roof, which was as yet untouched by the flames. He peered over for Matthew, but could see nothing of him.

For the moment the two were in no danger. But the flames were already licking the portion of the library immediately adjoining the house proper; soon the whole wing must be ablaze. The boy gazed wildly around, to see if there was any means, however risky or even desperate, by which escape might be made. He saw nothing but the slender branches of a magnificent yew that grew in the retired garden behind and close to the library. These boughs overtopped even the tall building, and some of them overhung the roof a little. But the nearest of them was ten feet above the heads of the two, and hopelessly out of reach. Would that some great gust of wind would drive those branches within clutching distance!

This tantalizing thought had hardly taken possession of George's mind when his attention was attracted by shouts from below. Peering down he was astonished to see Matthew rapidly climbing the yew. The same thought had struck him also! Up the climber swarmed, higher and higher. Then he began without hesitation to crawl along some of the topmost branches that overhung the library roof. Outwards he crept, embracing tightly half a dozen of the long thin boughs; they seemed but little more than twigs.

"You'll be dashed to pieces!" Mary cried; "go back, go back!"

"Haven't you a rope anywhere?" George asked eagerly.

"Every rope and ladder locked up in the stable yard," was the breathless reply, "and the men away. This is our only chance. Catch hold."

As Matthew spoke, the end of the long swaying branches, swinging ever lower, came down to the roof, and a good yard or more of the greenery was within George's grasp. Matthew lay at full length on his collection of boughs in order that his weight might keep the ends down. It was a precarious position truly, but Matthew was very light, and had absolutely no fear for himself.

"Lash her well to three or four of the strongest of the boughs," he said hurriedly; "give the rope half a dozen good turns about her waist and the boughs. They are yew and very tough. Quick!"

Hardly knowing what he was doing, George obeyed. He was a bit of a sailor, and in a couple of minutes he had bound the child to the branches in a way to satisfy even Matthew, who still lay amongst the foliage, some three yards away.

"Now cling for your life to the rest of the branches you've got, Fairburn, till I go down to the long thick arm there below. Can you hold?"

"Yes!" cried the other cheerfully, light beginning to dawn upon him.

"I can hold on; you go down."

Matthew moved down, and the branches, relieved of their burden, began to exert a considerable upward pull. But the weight of the boy and the girl held down the ends, and they awaited Matthew's call. It soon came, though the interval of waiting seemed an age.

"Now then!" came the shout, and George could see his quondam enemy firmly seated on a stout branch that had been cut shorter, its foliage having interfered with the light of one of the windows of the library.

Matthew was sitting astride, his legs firmly gripping the branch. "Now drop yourselves over," he went on. "You'll fall right on the top of me, and I'll grab you. Throw one arm round Mary's waist, and then seize the branches with both hands and stick tight."

"I'll stick like a leech," George replied, "but it's a fearful drop."

"There's no other way, none! See! the blaze has caught the library roof behind you! It will be upon you in another minute. Drop over, for pity's sake!"

George set his teeth, placed one arm round the child's slender form, gripped hard a handful of the pliant boughs, and dropped over the parapet, Mary closing her eyes in her mortal fright. With a huge swing the branches bent, and in an instant the two were swaying a good fifteen feet below, George almost jerked from his hold. The boughs creaked but did not snap.

"Thank heaven!" cried Matthew, "I have you!" And reaching up, he got a grip of George's foot and dragged down the swinging pair.

"Grab the branch with your legs, Fairburn! and I'll cut Mary clear."

No sooner said than done. By the aid of a good clasp-knife Matthew severed the cords and secured his little sister, her weight, however, as it came upon him, almost knocking him from his perch. But he held desperately, and in another moment had Mary on the branch beside him.

Then George, throwing his legs apart, suddenly loosed his hold of the branches and dropped also astride of the bough, which he grasped tight with both hands. He swung round and hung from the branch head downwards. But the next minute he had righted himself, and was ready to help with Mary.

The rescue was complete. To guide the child along the branch, towards the middle of the tree, and then to lower her from limb to limb of the old yew was mere play to the two boys. The three dropped the last four or five feet to earth just as a man rushed forward with a great cry, to clasp in his arms the fainting girl.

"G.o.d is merciful!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. It was Squire Blackett, who had arrived just in time to see his beloved child saved from an awful fate.

For a few moments father and children clung to each other. When at length they looked round to express their grat.i.tude to the plucky rescuer, he was nowhere to be seen. Seeing a great crowd of the Blackett pitmen arrive with a run, George had felt that he could be of no more use, and slipping into the wood had made for home. He wanted no thanks, and moreover the brig was to sail at four in the morning, at which time the tide would serve.

"He's gone--George has gone!" cried Matthew.

"We can never repay him," murmured Mr. Blackett. "We must go on to see him at the earliest moment in the morning."

When Mr. Blackett, with Matthew and the rescued Mary, drove early next day to the Fairburns' house, it was only to learn that George had sailed for London some hours before. There was no help for it, and all they could do was to overwhelm the father and mother with words of grat.i.tude and praise. They informed the Fairburns that by the exertions of the men the library and its contents had been saved; the rest of the mansion was left a wreck. Mrs. Maynard had been drawn from the ma.s.s of burning rubbish at the foot of the staircase, and was now lying between life and death.

George had had a bad quarter of an hour at the parting from his parents, but by the time the vessel felt the swell of the open sea he was full of spirits again. The sea voyage, even in a dirty collier, was a delight. Then there was London the wonderful at the end of it, and he had long desired to see the great capital of which he had heard and read so much.

The London of Queen Anne's reign was not the huge overgrown London of our own day. But it was a notable city, and to George Fairburn and his contemporaries the grandest city in the world. The Great Fire had taken place but twenty years before George was born, yet already the city had risen from its ashes, with wider and n.o.bler streets, and with a mult.i.tude of handsome churches which Wren had built. The new and magnificent St. Paul's, the great architect's proudest work, was rapidly approaching completion. George's father had witnessed the opening for worship of a portion of the cathedral five years before, and soon the stupendous dome, which was beginning to tower high above the city, would be finished. Sir Thomas Gresham's Exchange, the centre of the business life of the city, had been replaced by another and not less n.o.ble edifice. The great capital contained a population of well over half a million souls, a number that seemed incredible to those who knew only Bristol, and York, and Norwich, the English cities next in size. The houses stretched continuously from the city boundary to Westminster, and soon the two would be but one vast town. George had heard much of London Bridge, with its shops and its incessant stream of pa.s.sengers and vehicles, and he hoped to visit the pleasant villages of Kensington and Islington, and many another that lay within a walk of great London. He hoped one day, too, to get a glimpse of some of the clever wits, Mat Prior, Wycherley, d.i.c.k Steele, and others, who haunted the coffee-houses of the capital, and of the rising young writer, Mr. Addison, not to mention a greater than them all, the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton. For George had ever been a great reader, even while he loved a good game as well as any boy in the land.

It was many a long year, however, ere George Fairburn was destined to see the mighty capital. Once fairly at sea, the skipper brought out and mounted his four little guns, to the lad's huge joy.

"You mean business, captain," he remarked with a merry laugh.

"I do, if there comes along a Frenchy who won't leave us alone," the old fellow replied, "leastways if she isn't too big a craft for us altogether."

The evening was coming in, the town of Yarmouth faintly visible through the haze, when suddenly the crew of the _Ouseburn La.s.sie_ became aware of a big vessel in the offing.

"She's giving chase, by thunder!" cried the skipper, after he had taken a long look through the gla.s.s; and all was excitement on board the brig. Anxiously all hands watched the stranger, and at last the shout went up, "She's a Frenchy!"

"Aye, and a big 'un at that," somebody added.

Hastily the preparations were made to receive her, though the captain shook his head even as he gave his orders.

"It's no go," he whispered to George. "We've got these four small guns, but what's the good? We've n.o.body to man 'em; only a couple on 'em, leastways. And the Frenchman's a monster."