e helper if he is unable to help. The rest are
happy if they can delude themselves for the moment. "What could he
do?" cried one. "Help! Rescue!" cried others. "Even if one had wings,
he would not dare the ascent in such a storm." "Nettenmair surely
would." In the depths of their hearts, however, even the most
confident knew that he would not. The thought that the flame could be
extinguished if it were only accessible aggravated the general spirit
of uneasiness. It prevented that dull submission which the inevitable
with gentle severity compels. When the door opened and the suspended
ladder became visible, and it seemed as if somebody were going to dare
the deed, the effect on the crowd was as terrifying as the stroke
itself had been. And the ladder hung and swayed in the air with the
man who was climbing upward, enveloped in snow, encircled by
lightning; the ladder that seemed cut from a splinter swinging with
the man like a bell in the awful heights. Every one held his breath.
The same expression of horror stared from hundreds of unlike faces at
the man on high. None believed in the daring feat--and yet they saw
the man who dared. It was like something that was at the same time
dream and reality. Nobody believed in it, and yet each one stood
himself on the ladder while under him swung the light splinter in
storm and lightning and thunder, high between heaven and earth. And
again they stood below on the firm earth and looked upward; and yet if
the man should fall it would be they who fell. The people on the firm
ground held convulsively to their own hands, to their canes, to their
clothes, that they might not fall from the terrible height. They stood
secure, and yet at the same time they hung over the abyss of death,
for years, for a lifetime; the past had never been; and yet they had
only been hanging on high for a moment. They forgot the peril to the
town and their own, in the peril of the man above them whose peril was
their own. They saw that the fire was quenched, the danger to the town
was over; they knew it as in a dream when one knows that he dreams; it
was a mere thought without a living meaning. Only when the man had
climbed down the ladder, had disappeared into the door and drawn the
ladder after him, only when the people no longer clung to their own
hands, canes, and clothes, only then did admiration battle with
anxiety, only then did the exultant cry: "Hurrah! Brave fellow!"
become smothered in the lament: