Hamilton pointed to the wreck.
"Why didn't he jump?" yelled Neighbor.
Hamilton pointed at the twisted signal-tower; the red light still burned in it.
"You changed the signals on him," he cried, savagely. "What does it mean? We had rights against everything. What does it mean?" he raved, in a frenzy.
Neighbor answered him never a word; he only put his hand on Dad's shoulder.
"Find him first! Find him!" he repeated, with a strain in his voice I never heard till then; and the two giants hurried away together. When I reached the Sky-Scraper, buried in the thick of the smash, roaring like a volcano, the pair were already into the jam like a brace of ferrets, hunting for the engine crews. It seemed an hour, though it was much less, before they found any one; then they brought out 55's fireman. Neighbor found him. But his back was broken. Back again they wormed through twisted trucks, under splintered beams—in and around and over—choked with heat, blinded by steam, shouting as they groped, listening for word or cry or gasp.
Soon we heard Dad's voice in a different cry—one that meant everything; and the wreckers, turning like beavers through a dozen blind trails, gathered all close to the big fireman. He was under a great piece of the cab where none could follow, and he was crying for a bar. They passed him a bar; other men, careless of life and limb, tried to crawl under and in to him, but he warned them back. Who but a man baked twenty years in an engine cab could stand the steam that poured on him where he lay?
Neighbor, just outside, flashing a light, heard the labored strain of his breathing, saw him getting half up, bend to the bar, and saw the iron give like lead in his hands as he pried mightily.
Neighbor heard, and told me long afterwards, how the old man flung the bar away with an imprecation, and cried for one to help him; for a minute meant a life now—the boy lying pinned under the shattered cab was roasting in a jet of live steam. The master-mechanic crept in.
By signs Dad told him what to do, and then, getting on his knees, crawled straight into the dash of the white jet—crawled into it, and got the cab on his shoulders.