"What's the matter with your ladder?" asked Keith. "They took it away." "We'll use mine." They let themselves cautiously down the footholds that had been chopped in the roof, and looked over. A blast of smoke and flame met them in the face. "Good Lord, she's all afire!" cried Keith, aghast. The flames were licking around the scaling ladder, which was already blazing. Keith directed the stream from his hose straight down, but with no other result than to break the charred ladder. They crawled back to the ridgepole, and worked their hose lines around to the end of the building, out of the flames. Here a two-story drop confronted them. "This thing is going to fall under us if we don't do something," muttered Ward. "Duane's forgotten us, and those crazy idiots at the engines are too busy trying to keep from being washed," surmised Keith. "Look here," said Munro suddenly; "I'll brace against a chimney and hang on to the hose, and you can slide down it like a rope." "How about you?" demanded Ward crisply. "You can run for more ladders, once you're on the ground." At this moment the water failed in Keith's hose. He stared at the nozzle, then rapidly began to unscrew it. "Cistern empty or hose burst," surmised Munro. But Talbot Ward, cocking his ear toward a distant pandemonium of cheering, guessed the true cause. "Sucked," said he. By this he meant that the Monumental crew had succeeded in emptying their water box in spite of the Eureka's best efforts. "Get off your nozzle quick!" urged Keith. Munro, without stopping to ask why, bent his great strength to the task; and it was a task, for in his hose the pressure of the water was tremendous. It spurted back all over him, and at the last the nozzle was fairly blown away from him. "Now couple my hose to yours quick, quick, before my hose fills!" cried Keith. "They won't go--" Munro began to object. "Yes, they will, mine's a special thread," urged Keith, who had remembered Bert Taylor's reversed nozzle. All three bent their energies to catching the threads. It was a fearful job, for the strength of the water had first to be overcome. Keith was terribly excited. Time was precious, for not only might the roof give way beneath them, but at any moment the water might come again in Keith's hose. Then it would be physically impossible to make the coupling. All three men concentrated their efforts on it, their feet gripping the irregularities of the roof or slipping on the shingles. Frank Munro bent his enormous back to the task, the veins standing out in his temples, his face turning purple with the effort. Keith helped him as well as he was able. Talbot Ward, coolly, deliberately, delicately, as though he had all the time in the world, manipulated the coupling, feeling gingerly for the thread. The water spurted, fanned, sprayed, escaping with violence, first at one point, then at another, drenching and blinding them.