"Look out! Don't jump!" someone cried.

"We'll save you!" shouted the chief. "Get the ladder, boys! Lively now!"

Scores of willing ones raced to the wagon and began pulling out the ladders. They were the extension kind, and could be made quite long.

Several men ran with one toward the building.

"Not that side! The flames are too hot! You can't raise it there!" cried the chief. "Try around back!"

The men obeyed but a moment later there came a disappointing shout:

"Too short! The ladder's too short! Get a longer one!"

"That's the longest we've got!" answered the chief.

"Then splice two together!" urged some one, but the suggestion could hardly have been carried out with safety. No one knew what to do. The flames were mounting higher and higher, bursting out on all sides now, so that in a few moments, even had there been a ladder long enough to reach to the man, it could not have been raised against the building.

"Help! Help!" continued to call the seemingly-doomed one. He moved still nearer to the edge of the tower.

"Don't jump! Don't!" yelled the crowd. "You'll be killed!"

"He might just as well be killed by the fall as burned to death,"

remarked one man grimly. "In fact I'd prefer it."

"Can't someone do something?" begged a woman hysterically.

The man held out his hands appealingly.

"Oh, if we only had an airship, we could rescue him!" murmured Tom.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Joe. "I have an idea. If I could only get a rope up to him he could slide down it, if we held the outer end away from the fire--a slanting cable you know."

"That's it!" yelled his chum.

"How are you going to get a rope up to him?" asked Luke Fod.i.c.k, who was standing beside our hero. "No one could throw a rope up there."

"No, perhaps not a rope," admitted Joe, "but if I could throw a string we could tie the rope to the string and he could haul it up and fasten it."

"But you can't even throw a string up there," insisted Luke.

"Of course not!" added Hiram, who had joined his crony. "n.o.body could."

"Yes they can--I can!" cried Joe. "I'll throw up this ball of cord. It will unwind on the way up if I keep hold of one end of it," and he pulled from his pocket a ball of light but strong cord. Joe used it to wind around split bats. "I'm going to throw this," cried the young pitcher. "Hey there!" he yelled to the man on the tower. "Catch this as it comes, and pull up the rope we're going to fasten on!"

The man waved his hands helplessly. He could not hear.

"Where you going to get the rope?" asked Tom.

"Off the fire apparatus, of course. It's long and strong. Tom, you go get the rope off; I've got to make the man hear and understand before I can throw the cord."

"That's the stuff! The rope from the engine!" cried the man near Joe.

"That's the idea, young fellow!"

Accompanied by Tom, the man raced to the engine. He quickly explained what the plan of rescue was, and others aided in taking from the reel the long rope by which the apparatus was pulled. Once more Joe shouted his instructions, while the fire raged and crackled and the crowd yelled.

"Quiet! Quiet!" begged Joe. "I've got to make him hear!"

"Make a megaphone--here's a newspaper," suggested a man. He quickly rolled it into a cone, tore off the small end to make a mouthpiece and Joe had an improvised megaphone. Through it he begged the crowd to keep silent, and at last they heard and understood.

"I'm going to throw you a ball of cord!" called Joe through the paper cone to the man on the tower. "Catch it, and when I yell again, pull up the rope. Fasten it to the tower and we'll hold the ground end out and away from the flames. Then slide down."

The man waved his hands to show that he understood. Then Joe got ready to throw up the cord.

"He can't do it! He'll never be able to get that ball up to the man. It will fall short or go into the flames," said Luke Fod.i.c.k.

"He can't, eh?" asked Tom, who came back, helping to pull the long rope.

"You don't know how Joe Matson can throw. Just watch him."

And, amid a silence that was painfully tense, the young pitcher got ready to deliver a ball on which more depended than on any other he had ever thrown in all his life.

CHAPTER XX

THE WARNING

Joe hesitated a moment. Everything would depend on his one throw, because there was no chance to get another ball of cord, and if this one went wide it would fall into the fire and be rendered useless.

The fire was increasing, for all the chemicals in the tank on the wagon had been used, and no fresh supply was available. Below the tower on which the man stood, the flames raged and crackled. Even the tower itself was ablaze a little and at times the smoke hid the man from view momentarily.

"I'll have to wait until it clears," murmured the young pitcher, when, just as he got ready to throw, a swirl of vapor arose.

"You can't wait much longer," said Tom, in an ominously quiet voice.

"I know it," agreed Joe desperately, and it was but too evident. The tower itself, weakened by the fire, would soon collapse, and would carry the man down with it into the seething fire below.

"Throw! Throw!" urged several in the throng.

Joe handed the loose end of the cord to Tom. He wanted to give all his attention to throwing the ball. He poised himself as if he was in the pitching box. It was like a situation in a game when his side needed to retire the other in order to win, as when two men were out, three on bases and the man at bat had two strikes and three b.a.l.l.s. All depended on one throw.

With a quick motion Joe drew back his arm. There was an intaking of breath on the part of the crowd that could be heard even above the crackling of the flames. All eyes were centered on the young pitcher.

"He'll never do it," murmured Hiram Sh.e.l.l.

"If he does he's a better pitcher than I'll ever be," admitted Frank Brown.

Suddenly Joe threw. The white ball was plainly visible as it sailed through the air, unwinding as it mounted upward. On and on it went, Joe, no less than every one in the crowd, watching it with eager eyes. And as for the man on the tower he eagerly stretched out his hands to catch the ball of cord, on which his life now depended.