The whole of the front part of the train was a wreck; the engine lay on its side, belching fire and smoke, and the cars immediately behind it were a heap of wreckage, from which horrible sounds came, screams of mortal fear and pain. Even as I stood, staring, dazed like a drunken man, a flame shot up amid the piled-up mass of splintered wood. The wreckage was already afire, and as I saw that, I dashed forward. Others were as ready as I, and in half a minute we were frantically hauling at the wreckage, and endeavoring to extricate the poor wretches who were writhing and shrieking under it, before the fire should reach them.
A big man worked silently beside me, and together we got out several of the victims, till the flames drove us back, and we stood together, a little away from the scene, breathing hard, and incapable for the moment of any fresh exertion.
I looked at him then for the first time, though I had known all along that he was my courtly friend of the previous morning. His stern face, seen in the sinister light of the blazing wreckage, was ghastly; it was smeared with the blood that oozed from a wound across his forehead, and his blue eyes were aflame with horror and indignation.
He was evidently quite unaware of my presence, and I heard him mutter: “It was meant for me! My God! it was meant for me! And I have survived, while these suffer.”
I do not know what instinct prompted me to look behind at that moment, just in time to see that a man had stolen out from among the pines in our rear, and was in the act of springing on my companion.
“Gardez!” I cried warningly, as I saw the glint of an upraised knife, and flung myself on the fellow. As if my shout had been a signal, more men swarmed out of the forest and surrounded us.
What followed was confused and unreal as a nightmare. My antagonist was a wiry fellow, strong and active as a wild cat; also he had his knife, while I, of course, was unarmed. He got in a nasty slash with his weapon before I could seize and hold his wrist with my left hand. We wrestled in grim silence, till at last I had him down, with my knee on his chest. I shifted my hand from his wrist to his throat and choked the fight out of him, anyhow; then felt for the knife, but he must have flung it from him, and I had no time to search for it among the brushwood.
I sprang up and looked for my companion. He had his back to a tree and was hitting out right and left at the ruffians round him,—like hounds about a stag at bay.
“A moi!” I yelled to those by the train, who were still ignorant of what was happening so close at hand, and rushed to his assistance. I hurled aside one man, who staggered and fell; dashed my fist in the face of a second; he went down too, but at the same moment I reeled under a crashing blow, and fell down—down—into utter darkness.