Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/33

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I cannot say that I was frightened. Even the familiar "jumping of the heart into the throat," which so well describes the sensation usually experienced on the sudden discovery of deadly peril, was absent; for though I certainly saw the front end of that engine as plainly as I ever saw anything in my life, I had no time to realize what it meant. I made no move or effort of any kind, and it seemed that at the same instant that she burst upon my view daylight was shut out and I was drenched with cold water; yet before that happened they had come together, reared up, as I have said, and I had been thrown to the front of the cab; the tender had come ahead, staving the cab to pieces, thereby dropping me out on the ground, and by knocking a hole in itself against the back driving-wheel had deluged me with its contents.

The flood of cold water caused me, bewildered as I was, to try and get away from it. I knew I was under the wreck, and for a few minutes I could hear the cars piling up and grinding overhead.

I knew what that was, too, and feared they would smash the wreck down on top of me and so squeeze my life out. But the engine acted as a fender; for being jammed among the wreckage, she could not be pushed over; and as she stood on her rear wheels, she could not be mashed down.

The noise soon ceased, and then, except