The din of that devil’s smithy still thundered in their ears. “Let us get away from that,” Morris cried, and pointed to the vomit of steam that still spouted from the broken engines. And the pair helped each other up, and stood and quaked and wavered and stared about them at the scene of death.
Just then they were approached by a party of men who had already organised themselves for the purposes of rescue.
“Are you hurt?” cried one of these, a young fellow with the sweat streaming down his pallid face, and who, by the way he was treated, was evidently the doctor.
Morris shook his head, and the young man, nodding grimly, handed him a bottle of some spirit.
“Take a drink of that,” he said; “your friend looks as if he needed it badly. We want every man we can get,” he added; “there’s terrible work before us, and nobody should shirk. If you can do no more, you can carry a stretcher.”
The doctor was hardly gone before Morris, under the spur of the dram, awoke to the full possession of his wits.
“My God!” he cried. “Uncle Joseph!”
“Yes,” said John, “where can he be? He can’t be far off. I hope the old party isn’t damaged.”
“Come and help me to look,” said Morris, with a snap of savage determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and then, for one moment, he broke forth. “If he’s dead!” he cried, and shook his fist at heaven.
To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground, especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities—here a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth his index with a tragic gesture. John followed the direction of his brother’s hand.