The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 27 April 1911, Page 747

The Storyteller

COLBY’S CRUX

(Concluded from last week.) Maggie!’ 1 Papa!’ ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Yes, but hurry, papa!’ ‘My girl, I dare not venture close w ; th the ladder; the heat from the lower floors would fire it like a match. Stand aside a little.’ Once, twice, ho threw, and missed, the metal clasp swinging back beneath the ladder. The third throw, the life-line pierced the window like a rocket threads the rigging of a sinking ship. ■ ‘ Now, Maggie, make the rope fast about your waist; hold hard with both hands, and have no fear!’ Rigid and dumb, the spectators saw the girl place her feet out of the window, and sit for a moment on the sill. ‘l’m ready, papa!’ ‘Steady, my child!’ There was a flash, the rope leapt taught, the ladder dipped and swayed like the tip of a tall pine struck by a ' hurricane blast. Who shall say how many thousands of faces caught the hue of marble —how many thousands of hearts jumped and stopped To his tossing spar Colby clung like a grizzled gale-fighter on a top-gallant mast. Full width of the street swung the pendant figure. At .the end of the swing, catching through the shifting smoke, a vivid glimpse of the girl’s face, the crow r d -was astonished and awed to perceive that, while deathly pale, it was resolute, proud, and unafraid. Back swept the figure, then to and fro, like the pendulum of a clock. The movements shortening, lap by lap, Colby drew up the life-line ; and at last, at that long ladder’s dizzy tip ; in the silvering glory of those vast ruins, the people saw — as many as could see —the veteran fireman with his baby secure in his great right arm. Again Colby Hunt’s quiet, tree-lined street, with the tremulous light, the twirling leaves, and the chill wind whispering sadly. ‘Maggie, how are you?’ The girl’s hair lay in golden-brown profusion upon her pillow. If pale, she was strikingly pretty, in her snowy night-dress, with its single blue ribbon worked in and out at the yoke. She smiled, and pressed her father’s big head to her heart, her tightly compressed lashes quivering. ‘ I’ve just jome from the hospital,’ said Colby, turning to his wife. 1 Arnold and the others are doing well. There’s to be a tremendous public funeral for Hubbard and the men who died with him. _ Mother, with no sleeo last night, and all day to-day digging about the ruins of Moultrie’s I’m fagged and famished; but before I eat or sleep 1 must tell you and Maggie something.’ Mrs. Hunt sat down, leaned on an elbow, and looked at her husband over her glasses. ‘ At noon to-day I was called to the Mayor’s office. The fire commissioners and a lot of other men were there. The Mayor made a speech in which he used many glowing words about how I saved some lives last night, and, as he put it, “turned back the tide of general disaster.” Mother, for a while that ordeal was almost harder on me than the fire. I was standing, bare-headed, looking at the floor, and could feel the sweat popping out on my forehead. But somehow- I suddenly lost my sense of distress. The Mayor’s words entered right into me, and I felt myself filling with self-confidence and power. - And by and by, when the Mayor told me what he wanted me to do, and asked would I do it, I said, without any hint of wavering, “If you wish it, your honor.” “I do wish it,” said he, “ and so do the commissioners and the city.” And then the Mayor gave me this.’ - Colby drew from his pocket a stiff, crackling sheet of paper, and unfolded it on the bed. They all bent over it. It bore the Mayor’s signature and the great red seal of the municipality. It said, in effect, that that day upon the shoulders of Colby Hunt had fallen the mantle of the dead chief. For some moments the silence was broken only by Colby’s tired_ breathing. Then his proud old wife—how strangely bright and young she had become! —asked curiously : ‘And, Colby, did you make a speech?' ‘Oh, no, mother. All I said was — “God helping me, I’ll be a good chief.”’ Montreal Tribune.