“Where is she?”
Still pinned fast, he tried to look around in search of her.
There were shrieks for help. He saw a man crushed and silent beneath a heavy mass that had flattened his chest. The horror of it all began to dawn upon him.
Then Frank struggled with sudden desperation to set himself free and find the girl he now knew he loved. He wondered for one moment if his foot and ankle had been crushed, but only for that one moment did he think of himself.
“Inza!” he gasped. “Where are you? I pray she has not been killed—she, my own sweetheart!”
A man with an ax began to smash furiously with it to break a way to freedom. It was Roy Swift, and he seemed frantic with terror. In his furious haste to escape from the wreck he several times came near hitting Frank on the head with the ax.
“Hold on, Swift!” cried Merry. “You can get out there all right in a moment. Just help me get my foot free here, will you?”
The young soldier gave him a look, and then snarled:
“Take care of yourself!”
Then, having made an opening large enough, he dropped the ax and crawled out.