“Ten trains have run together.... I can’t come to you! I must go and get help!”
“Oh, Freder, the water’s already close behind us!”
“The water—?”
“Yes!—And the walls are falling in!”
“Are you hurt—?”
“No, no.... Oh, Freder, if you could only force open the door wide enough for me to push the little children’s bodies through....”
The man above her did not give her an answer.
When steeling his muscles and sinews in the “Club of the Sons,” playfully wrestling with his friends, he surely never guessed that he would need them one day to force a path through ruined cables, upright pistons and out-spread wheels of fallen machines to the woman he loved. He thrust the pistons aside like human arms, clutched into steel as into soft, yielding flesh. He worked his way nearer the door and threw himself on the ground.
“Maria—?”
“Freder?”