“We will either be burned or drowned if we do not speedily escape,” he said. “But before we think of ourselves we must see if there are any more alive in the car.”
“I’m with you to the death!” the other cried, heartily; then he shuddered. “But this is horrible! How the water seethes over the settling wreck! And it will be on fire inside presently.”
“Be good, little darling!” Norman cried to the whimpering, frightened baby, who sat very still where he had placed her, with a dazed look in her big blue eyes.
Obeying a pitying impulse, he kissed her lightly, then turned to his grewsome task.
The two other drummers were soon discovered, both stone dead, and one horribly mutilated.
“God rest their souls!” cried the drummer, who was a devout Catholic.
He crossed himself, his face pale with grief and horror, then went on with his task. The mysterious woman had not been found yet.
A few steps further on and they began to pull away great fragments of the roof where it had crashed in over the seat where she had been reclining. They were obliged to work very carefully lest she should be pinioned under them yet alive, and they must not crush out the faintest spark of life.
And above them and around them the fierce and swollen river roared like a tiger eager for its prey, while within the narrow compass of the wrecked car the air began to grow hot and dense with smoke from the burning lamp that had sent its blazing oil running about like tongues of flame, devouring all it touched.
A minute more and they found her, dead. Norman de Vere was never to know whether the face over which he had wondered was beautiful or homely. The heavy timbers had mutilated it beyond all semblance of humanity, and he reeled and sickened at sight of the bloody corpse.