A little river ordinarily insignificant enough, but swollen now to a torrent by incessant rains for several days, had washed all the mortar from the stone foundations of the railroad bridge and weakened it so that the weight of the locomotive had carried it down crashing to the bed of the river and telescoped the train.
When Norman de Vere realized that, but for a sharp blow on the head from a heavy timber, he was unhurt, and that he held the struggling child safe in his arms, it seemed to him that he must have been saved by a miracle, nothing less.
The whole train was a wreck, and but for the fact that the ladies’ car was on top of the débris, he could never have escaped alive. He was wedged between two seats of the car, which lay on its side, the windows uppermost, and over and around surged the raging water, churned into foam by the rapid descent of the train, and by the explosion of the locomotive’s boiler as soon as it touched the river. To add to the horror of the position, the lamps just lighted by the brakeman had exploded and caught fire, affording a lurid light within the interior of the wrecked car.
The child in his arms waked and screamed with sudden terror. He hushed her with a tender word, and listened appalled for another human sound in that terrible tumult of crashing timbers and raging waters.
But no sound came.
He saw the brakeman’s legs sticking out from under a pile of timbers that had instantaneously crushed the life from his body. Turning about in his cramped position, he looked for Sweetheart’s mother and the drummers.
There was no sign of the slender little black-draped figure, but a pair of masculine arms protruded from under an overturned seat. He put Sweetheart down and went to work manfully to extricate the owner.
To his joy, he dragged the man out, stunned, but alive—one of the jolly drummers. Rapidly as he could, he resuscitated him and made him understand their position.