Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/40

36 added the incisive order to hurry—hurry!

The relief train—switch engine, a flat car and two day coaches—started fifteen minutes after the message had been received and Stratton rode with the others in the forward coach. It was a quiet, repressed group that had gathered there; the four doctors, examining and rearranging the contents of their kits, one even removing his coat and cuffs in ominous preparation; the amateur nurses nervously sorting stacks of towels and rolls of cotton upon the red plush seats; the group of helpers, recruited from the loungers about the depot, standing silently in the aisle or on the swaying front platform and gazing down the straight track ahead.

A high, motionless column of white smoke and steam first warned the watchers that their race was approaching its end. The engine loosed a prolonged blast, rumbled across Trinity bridge and slowed down as they neared the curve that brought the wreck into view.

Two cars remained on the track, a third slanted down the steep embankment and the remaining four lay in an irregular "W" in the muddy lagoon at the riverside. At its head was the engine, drivers in the air, a peaceful film of smoke rising from its riven vitals.

A group of those who had escaped, occupants of the rear coaches for the most part, were standing in groups on the tracks and gazing down upon the half-submerged coaches below. Several who were not seriously injured were seated along the fence opposite, where they were subjected to the gaze of the curious. A dozen men walked back and forth along the sprawled coaches below, carrying sticks with which they carefully smashed the cracked glass from the sashes of the windows. Save for the steaming engine of the relief train, this clash of glass was the only definable sound that the rescuers could hear.

The arrival of the relief train speedily brought a return of decision to the survivors; reality, which for half an hour had been in eclipse, pushed again to the fore and the work of rescue began to move quickly. Ropes were obtained; jammed doors were forced or men lowered through broken windows. Another relief train came hurrying into sight from down the valley, and directly behind, the business-like wrecker from division headquarters. Authoritative shouts filled the air; the axes of the wrecking crew crashed through paneling and portions of broken seats were shoved through windows and tossed aside. Stretchers appeared; the line by the fence grew longer.

Stratton busied himself here. He obtained the names and addresses of the injured and the extent of their injuries; he listened to the conflicting stories of the survivors and culled the truth from the distorted; he aided in searching the pockets for means of identifying the dead. The work was not new to him; it was the "violence story" atmosphere that he had so lately escaped. He moved about quickly, his voice quick, nervously tense, his face an absorbed mask.

He reached the end of the line and sat down upon an overturned plush