scorched my skin.

Close at hand were my boots. I drew them on and then fumbled about for
one or two articles of clothing. The wild light that rushed past the
transom told me that escape by way of the passage was already cut off,
and even as I looked a small, curling tress of flame blew in through the
crack between the door and the worn sill.

The window was less easy to find. As I felt for it through the veil of
smoke strange conjectures stole into my brain. What if this were the
plan of Carson Wildred's wily accomplice for getting safely rid of me?

I had no intention of being got rid of thus easily, however. I found the
window and opened the lower sash. With the rush of air from outside my
oppressed lungs got relief for a second or two, but the draught drew in
the flames that rioted through the hall; the glass in the transom,
already cracked, burst with a loud explosive sound, and a torrent of
fire and smoke poured in through the aperture.

Had I not leaped on to the window-sill, and without an instant's
hesitation let myself swing over, I could not have kept my senses in
that raging furnace.

If I had had a room in the main building of the hotel, I should only
have had to step on to a verandah outside my window, but in this wing
(which I had chosen as my place of residence because I had inhabited it
before) there was nothing of the sort, and I had now the space of about
ten seconds to decide whether to jump or have my hands burnt off my
wrists.

In any case the decision could not have been a difficult one, but, as it
happened, the need was rendered the more imperative by the fact that
smoke had already begun to pour from the window below. Very shortly
escape would be cut off in all directions.

My room was on the second floor, high enough to give me a severe fall,
perhaps a fatal one, and I felt that my life was of value now.
Cautiously but hurriedly I reached out with one hand to the side of the
window, hanging with all my weight from the other, which clutched the
sill. My groping fingers came in contact with a twisted rope of
creepers; bare of leaves for winter, and serviceable for the use I
wished to put it to. I grasped the thick stems for dear life, and went
down hand over hand, dimly hearing voices from below cheering me in my
descent.

I had been unconscious of the noise until that moment, but as my feet
touched the ground I was received with acclamations, and saw that a
crowd was rapidly collectin