Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/192

176 here and there on shapeless, black things which writhed and moaned as his feet touched them.

The air was torn with the cries of animals, and of men and women and little children.

"Padre!" "Madre!" "O misericordia!" "Au secours!" "Dieu!" "Sangu Cristu!" came the shrill, agonized shouts in a mixture of French and Corsican; and he passed men who were staggering as if they were drunk, their hands stretched out in front of them; there were others who were sitting on the débris of their homes, still, vacant-eyed, as if turned into stone; and one woman had gone mad—she was dancing among the slow-lapping flames, her skirts kilted to her knees, a dead babe in her arms.

He ran on.

Would he arrive in time? Perhaps she was still alive, mercifully imprisoned by some stout stones or beams.

There was a choked, sobbing cry for help from a ruined mass to the left of the church, and he saw, sharp in the moonlight, the naked arm of a woman stretching from between a jagged pile of burning wood. The fingers, covered with rings, groped blindly, like the tentacles of an octopus.