The Argosy, December 1905 — page 167: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BLOCK TOWER SEVEN. notice a growing trouble. The air in the car was bad—had been so since early morning, but now, added to its musti- ness, was a smell of burning wood which he could not at first understand. This tang of smoke in his nostrils grew worse as time progressed. Now and then he breathed in a sudden puff of it, which entered by some tiny crack, and his lungs began to smart while the brown gloom in the car became thicker. He tried to find some _ interstice through which he could see, but although there were several narrow cracks, he could behold nothing at all outside. Faintly borne to his ears, how- ever, was the crackling of the flames. The forest was afire, and the wind was driving the smoke down into this gully. Would the conflagration itself follow? That was the question which shook him as he turned again to his task of digging out the match-boxes. Here he was packed in with boxes of matches, the fumes from which would be as suffocating as those from a sulphur spring. Once afire, the matches would cause his suffocation in short order. LHvery moment was precious, and he worked madly to escape from his prison. And to what end? Suppose he were able to reach the side door of the box- car and could force it open (and that was no probable fact), would he not be prac- tically leaping from the frying pan into the fire? The woods all about were evidently in flames. The sounds of the increasing conflagration grew plainer and plainer. Free of the car, he would at once be swallowed up by the flames and smoke now fast filling the ravine. These thoughts maddened him, yet he continued his task of moving the boxes. He had sunk quite a shaft into the heap, which: now towered over his head threateningly. “ Whether I get out of this or no, I’ve got to fight for my life,” was his de- cision. “Tl not give it up yet. ll fight as long as I can breathe—as long as I can stir one of these boxes! ”—and up came another to be raised carefully to the top of the barrier behind him. 10 A 145 He had stopped crying aloud now. There was no good in shouting for help. The railroad men would keep out of the ravine until the fire was past, and he needed all his strength for this seemingly interminable task fate had set him, CHAPTER XX. IN GRAVE PERIL. THE perspiration poured from Dan Crompton’s limbs while he tugged at the boxes, expecting each moment that the pile in his rear would tumble down upon him. The air grew closer and more tinctured with the hot smoke. The fire roared in his ears. The trees shrouding the sides of the ravine, and whose tops hid the wrecked ear from the railroad bed, were all afire. From above, the gully must have had the appearance of a geyser of flame and smoke. Yet down here at the bot- tom the fire was slow in making headway because there was no draft. Suddenly, in pulling out a box, Dan was dazzled by a shaft of light which entered from below. It came from be- neath the runway of the door. This spurred him to renewed toil. ‘To be so near escape, and yet to fail! God! That could not be. Panting for breath, tearing his hands _ upon the sharp-edged iron strips with which the boxes were bound, straining his already overworked muscles to the final point of endurance, the imprisoned signalman kept up the fight. _ He saw the edge of the door-frame below him. The door slid upon the outside of the car, and he did not know whether it slid toward the end on which 30-71-11 now stood, or toward the end in the air. If the latter, he knew that all his work had been for naught. And, indeed, this might be so in either case, for how was he to unfasten the door when the hasp was upon the outside ? This thought brought to his lips a gasping shriek—a cry of despair and horror. Hark! Was that an answering voice from without? GO NOOK (C@