The other keepers were as rapid, each on his beat, and soon the more rational patients took the alarm and were persuaded or driven out half-dressed into the yard, where they cowered together in extremity of fear; for the fire began to roar overhead like a lion, and lighted up the whole interior red and bright. All was screaming and confusion; and then came a struggle to get the incurable out from the basement story. There was no time to handcuff them. The keepers trusted to the terror of the scene to cow them, and so opened the doors and got them out anyhow. Wild, weird forms, with glaring eyes and matted hair, leaped out and ran into the hall, and laughed, and danced, and cursed in the lurid reflection of the fires above. Hell seemed discharging demons. Men recoiled from them.
And well they did; for now the skylight exploded, and the pieces fell tinkling on the marble hall fast as hail. The crowd recoiled and ran; but those awful figures continued their gambols. One picked up the burning glass and ground it in his hands that bled directly: but he felt neither burn nor cut. The keepers rushed in to withdraw them from so dangerous a place: all but one obeyed with sudden tameness: that one struggled and yelled like a demon. In the midst. of which fearful contest came a sudden thundering at a door on the third floor.
"What is that?" cried Rooke.
"It is Mr. Hardie," screamed the Robin. "You have left him locked in.""I told Hayes to let him out long ago.""But Hayes hasn't got the key. You've got it.""No, no. I tell you Hayes has got it.""No, no! Murder! murder! They are dead men. Run for Mrs. Archbold, somebody. Run! Here, hammers, hammers! for God's sake, come and help me, break the door. Oh, Rooke, Rooke!""As I'm a man Hayes has got the key," cried Rooke, stamping on the ground, and white with terror.
By this time Garrett had got a hammer, and he and Wales rushed wildly up the stairs to batter in the strong door if they could. They got to the third floor, but with difficulty; the smoke began to blind them and choke them, and fiery showers fell on them, and drove them back smarting and choking. Garrett sank down gasping at the stair-foot. Wales ran into the yard uttering pitiful cries, and pointing wildly upwards; but before he got there, a hand had broken through the glass of a window up in the third floor, the poor white hand of a perishing prisoner, and clutched the framework and tore at it.
At this hand a thousand white faces were now upturned amid groans of pity and terror, such as only multitudes can utter. Suddenly those anxious faces and glistening eyes turned like one, for an attempt, wild and unintelligible, but still an attempt, was about to be made to save that hand and its owner out of the very jaws of death.
Now amongst the spectators was one whose life and reason were at stake on that attempt.
Mrs. Dodd was hurrying homeward from this very neighbourhood when the fire broke out. Her son Edward was coming at nine o'clock to tea, and, better still, to sleep. He was leaving the fire brigade. It had disappointed him; he found the fire-escape men saved the lives, the firemen only the property. He had gone into the business earnestly too;he had invented a thing like a treble pouch hook, which could he fastened in a moment to the end of a rope, and thrown into the window, and would cling to the bare wall, if there was nothing better, and enable him to go up and bring life down. But he had never got a chance to try it; and, _per contra,_ he was on the engine when they went tearing over a woman and broke her arm and collar-bone in the Blackfriars Road; and also when they went tearing over their own fire-dog, and crippled him. All this seemed out of character, and shocked Edward; and then his mother could not get over the jacket.
In a quarter of an hour he was to take off the obnoxious jacket for ever, and was now lounging at the station smoking a short pipe, when a man galloped up crying "Fire!""All right!" said Edward, giving a whiff. "Where?""Lunatic Asylum. Drayton House."Guess how long before the horses were to, and the engine tearing at a gallop down the road, and the firemen shouting "Fire! fire!" to clear the way, and Edward's voice the loudest.
When the report of fire swept townward past Mrs. Dodd, she turned, and saw the glow.