[The Two Vanrevels by Booth Tarkington]@TWC D-Link bookThe Two Vanrevels CHAPTER VI 5/9
"Let's go up." Thus it happened, that when the water came again, and Vanrevel let it fall in a grateful cascade upon Crailey and himself, three manly voices were heard singing, as three men toiled through the billows of rosy gray, below the beleaguered pair: "Oh the noble Duke of York, He had Ten thousand men; He marched them up the side of a house, And marched them down again!" A head appeared above the eaves, and Marsh, then Eugene, then Cummings, came crawling over the cornice in turn, to join their comrades.
They were a gallant band, those young gentlemen of Rouen, and they came with the ironical song on their lips, and, looking at one another, ragged and scarified, burst into hoarse but indomitable laughter. Two others made an attempt to follow, and would not be restrained.
It was noticed that parts of the lower ladder had been charring; and the ladder-men were preparing to remove it to a less dangerous point, when old General Trumble and young Jefferson Bareaud made a rush to mount it, and were well upon their upward way before the ladder, weakened at the middle, sagged, splintered, and broke, Trumble and Bareaud falling with it.
And there was the grappling-ladder, dangling forty feet above the ground; and there were the five upon the roof. The Department had no other ladder of more than half the length of the shattered one.
Not only the Department, but every soul in Rouen, knew that; and there rose the thick, low sigh of a multitude, a sound frightful to hear.
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