"Carry out your clothes if you can find them, girls," she said calmly,
"but don't wait to put anything on."

We groped through the smoke and found our clothes on the chair beside
the bed, and gathering them up went out into the hall. The hotel was
old-fashioned, with a long, narrow wooden hallway running the entire
length of the up-stairs, crossed in places by other halls. Somewhere
along that hall was the stairway; we had a dim remembrance of the
direction from which we had come up the night before. We had to grope
our way along by keeping our hands on the wall, for the smoke was so
thick that it was impossible to see a step before us. We reached the
stairs at last. After one look we jumped back in alarm. The whole
stairway was one mass of leaping flames. I have never seen such a
dreadful sight. We groped our way back toward our rooms, which were at
the front of the building, intending to lean out of the windows and
shout for help from below. But we lost our way in the smoke and could
not find the way back. There we were, caught like rats in a trap, with
the flames beginning to come through the floor in places, and the smoke
rolling around us in blinding, suffocating clouds. There was no escape,
then. We were to perish in this hotel blaze. Would we ever be
identified? How soon would they know at home? All these things flashed
through my mind as we stood there in the midst of that awful nightmare.

Suddenly something appeared out of the smoke close beside us, something
white and ghostlike. Then a voice spoke. "Follow me, girls," it said,
and we knew that the ghost was a man with a towel tied over his face.
"All of you get in line behind your mother," said the voice thickly,
"and each one hold onto the one in front of you. Don't let go, or
you'll be lost and I can't watch you."