Dr. Dumanys Wife | Page 7

eyes and tongues, a smoke-fiend!
The great boiler of the locomotive had gone down first. There it fell,
not on the ground, but on a large fragment of rock, which pierced it
completely, so that the air had free access to the fire. Upon the top of
both boiler and tender, the coal-van had been turned upside down, and
these had pulled all the carriages one on top of the other in the same
way, so that the whole train stood upright, like some huge steeple. This
dreadful structure had become a great funeral pile, the altar of a black
pagan idol whose fiery tongues were greedily thrusting upward to
devour their prey.
Then, as the smoke became blacker and blacker, a heart-rending,
almost maddening sound of shrieking and crying rang out from that
devilish wreck, so loud and piercing that it drowned the clatter of
stones, the crackling of the fast-kindling coals, and the crushing noise
of the metals. At the cry for aid of the doomed victims, all who had
escaped and hidden behind the bulwark came forth, creeping or running,
shrieking and gesticulating, forgetful of their own danger and pitiful
condition, thinking only of those dear lost ones there in that abode of
hell, and maddened at the impossibility of rescuing them. It was a wild
hurly-burly of voices and of tongues, of despairing yells, hysterical
sobs, heart-rending prayers; and as I stumbled over the twisted and
broken rails, that stood upright like bent wires, and stooped over the
bulwark, I beheld a spectacle so terrible that every nerve of my body,
every heart-string, revolted at it. Even now they quiver at the ghastly
recollection.
As the fire lighted up the horrible pile I could see that the first carriage
atop of the coals was a shattered mass, the second crushed flat, while
the third stood with wheels uppermost, and so forth to the top, and out
of all of them human heads, limbs, faces, bodies, were thrust forward.
Two small gloved female hands, locked as in prayer, were stretched out

of a window, and above them two strong, muscular, masculine arms
tried with superhuman force to lift the iron weight above, to break a
way at the top, until the blood flowed from the nails, and even these
strong arms dropped down exhausted. Half-seen forms, mutilated,
bleeding, were tearing with teeth and nails at their dreadful prison.
Then for a while the smoky cloud involved everything in darkness. A
moment after, the red fiery tongues came lapping upward, and a red,
glowing halo encircles the fatal wreck. The first and second carriages
were already burned. How long would it take the flames to reach the
top? How many of the sufferers were yet alive? What power in heaven
or earth could save them, and how?
The hollow into which the train had fallen was so deep that, in spite of
the erect position of the ill-fated pile, the topmost car--that containing
the poor foolish American governess, who had lost her life in running
back for her bonnet--was ten mètres below us, and we had not even a
single rope or cord with which to hazard the experiment of descending.
A young man, one of those few who had come forth unharmed, ran up
and down the embankment, shouting madly for a rope, offering a
fortune for belts, shawls, and cords. His newly-married bride was in
one of those carriages, and hers were the tiny gloved hands that were
stretched out of the window. "A rope!" cried he; "give me anything to
make a rope!" But who heeded him?
A young mother sat on the tracks, fondly hugging a plaid shawl in her
arms. Her babe was there in that burning pyre, but horror had
overpowered her reason. There she sat, caressing the woollen bundle,
and in a low voice singing her "Eia Popeia" to the child of her fantasy.
An aged Polish Jew lay across the barricade wall. His two hands were
stretched downward, and there he muttered the prayers and invocations
of his ancient liturgy, which no one there understood but himself and
his God. The ritual prayer-bands were upon his thumbs and wrists, and
encircling his forehead. His forked beard and greasy side-locks dangled
as he chanted his hymns, while his eyes, starting almost out of their
sockets, were fixed upon one of the carriages. What did that car contain?
His wife? His children? Or his worldly goods, the fortune hoarded up

through a life-time of cunning and privation? Who knows? Forth he
chants his prayers, loudly yelling, or muttering low, as the ghastly
scene before him vanishes in smoke and darkness, or glows out again
in fearful distinctness.
Every one shrieks, cries, prays, swears, raves.
No; not every one! There, on the barricade, his logs