upset the truck; but
every second counted here, and they took the chance.

As they drew along the curb, Fireman McDermott sprang up the slowly
rising ladder, and two men came behind with scaling-ladders, for they
saw that the main ladder would never reach the woman. Five stories is
what it did reach, and then McDermott, standing on the top round,
smashed one of the scaling-ladders through a sixth-story window, and
climbed on, smashed the second scaling-ladder through a seventh-story
window, and five seconds later had the woman in his arms.

[Illustration: USE OF THE SCALING LADDERS.]

To carry a woman down the front of a burning building on scaling-ladders
is a matter of regular routine for a fireman, like jumping from a fourth
story down to a net, or making a bridge of his body. It is part of the
business. But to have one foot in the air reaching for the lower rung of
a swaying, flimsy thing, and to feel another rung break under you and
your struggling burden, and to fall two feet and catch safely, that is a
thing not every fireman could do; but McDermott did it, and he brought
the woman unharmed to the ground--and the dog, too.

Almost at the same moment, the crowd on Forty-seventh Street thrilled in
admiration of a rescue feat even more perilous. On the roof, screaming
in terror, was Kate Flannigan, a servant, swaying over the cornice, on
the point of throwing herself down. Then out of a top-floor window crept
a little fireman, and stood on the fire-escape, gasping for air. Then he
reached in and dragged out an unconscious woman and lowered her to
others, and was just starting down himself when yells from the street
made him look up, and he saw Kate Flannigan. She was ten feet above him,
and he had no means of reaching her.

The crowd watched anxiously, and saw the little fireman lean back over
the fire-escape, saw him motion and shout something to the woman. And
then she crept over the cornice edge, hung by her hands for a second,
and dropped into the fireman's arms. It isn't every big strong man who
could catch a sizable woman in a fall like that and hold her, but this
stripling did it, because he had the nerve and knew how. And that made
another life saved.

By this time flames were breaking out of every story from street to
roof. It seemed impossible to go on with the rescue work; yet the men
persisted, even on the Fifth Avenue front, bare of fire-escapes. They
used the long extension ladders as far as the