As if in answer, Mlle. Nadiboff was seen suddenly to reel backward as though overcome by the smoke that poured up at her from the floor below.

“Where are you going?” shouted Jacob Farnum, hoarsely, as the submarine captain threw off his jacket like a flash.

“Up there—­of course—­to help her!” Jack shouted back at him, as he leaped at the rungs.

“It’s the only thing a man can do,” admitted Farnum, hoarsely.  “Good luck to you, Jack!”

CHAPTER XXIII

“Good-bye, my captain!”

The first part of the climb was easy.

Unmindful of the cheers that followed the submarine boy raced up the ladder.

Then he struck the belt of heavy smoke.  Flames, too, leaped out at him.  He went through that zone of red with all possible speed, yet swift as he was, he felt as though he were being roasted.

Then, at a greater height, the boy was forced to close his mouth, barely breathing, for the smoke surrounded him.  He felt as though he were stifling, but he kept on.

Up on the sill the watching crowd below saw him.  Then Jack Benson leaped inside.

Ah!  He could breathe, here, just a bit more, though the smoke had followed him.

At the further end of the room, by the door that opened upon the corridor, the flames were eating their way up through from the floor below.  There was a red barrier there that shut off any hope of retreat by the corridor.

Yet these things Jack Benson saw only as his gaze swiftly swept the room.

Mlle. Nadiboff lay in an unmoving, unconscious heap on the floor, some ten feet back from the window.  She was in evening dress, as though prepared to descend to dinner.

“She can’t go through the line of fire in that rig,” muttered Jack, even while his head reeled from the weight of smoke on his lungs.

Furiously he sprang at the bed, snatching off the blankets.  These he threw on the floor, rolling the Russian woman up in them.

Then he bent over to lift her.  Ordinarily he could have performed the task with ease, for his young arms were strong.  But now, three-quarters strangled by the smoke he had inhaled, Jack fairly tottered, with the insensible human form in his arms, back to the window: 

As he stepped out upon the ladder Jack vaguely heard the cheers that volleyed up at him.

To most of those below it looked as though he were moving easily.  But Hal, waiting on the rungs of the ladder, just below the fearful belt of smoke and flames, saw differently at a glance.

Holding firmly to his burden, Jack started down carefully, but as swiftly as his quaking knees would permit.

“Come along!  Steady with you!” bellowed up Hal Hastings, as he fought his way up to his chum.

An instant later Hal growled out