They followed him again, unquestioning, obedient. Alan followed close to him. It was not pity which stirred him now for Benjamin Corvet; nor was it bitterness; but it certainly was not contempt. Of all the ways in which he had fancied finding Benjamin Corvet, he had never thought of seeing him like this!
It was, probably, only for a flash; but the great quality of leadership which he once had possessed, which Sherrill had described to Alan and which had been destroyed by the threat over him, had returned to him in this desperate emergency which he had created. How much or how little of his own condition Corvet understood, Alan could not tell; it was plain only that he comprehended that he had been the cause of the catastrophe, and in his fierce will to repair it he not only disregarded all risk to himself; he also had summoned up from within him and was spending the last strength of his spirit. But he was spending it in a losing fight.
He got off two more cars; yet the deck only dipped lower, and water washed farther and farther up over the fantail. New avalanches of iron descended as box cars above burst open; monstrous dynamo drums, broad-banded steel wheels and splintered crates of machinery battered about. Men, leaping from before the charging cars, got caught in the murderous melee of iron and steel and wheels; men's shrill cries came amid the scream of metal. Alan, tugging at a crate which had struck down a man, felt aid beside him and, turning, he saw the priest whom he had passed on the stairs. The priest was bruised and bloody; this was not his first effort to aid. Together they lifted an end of the crate; they bent—Alan stepped back, and the priest knelt alone, his lips repeating the prayer for absolution. Screams of men came from behind; and the priest rose and turned. He saw men caught between two wrecks of cars crushing together; there was no moment to reach them; he stood and raised his arms to them, his head thrown back, his voice calling to them, as they died, the words of absolution.
Three more cars at the cost of two more lives the crew cleared, while the sheathing of ice spread over the steel inboard, and dissolution of all the cargo became complete. Cut stone and motor parts, chasses and castings, furniture and beams, swept back and forth, while the cars, burst and splintered, became monstrous missiles hurtling forward, sidewise, aslant, recoiling. Yet men, though scattered singly, tried to stay them by ropes and chains while the water washed higher and higher. Dimly, far away, deafened out by the clangor, the steam whistle of Number 25 was blowing the four long blasts of distress; Alan heard the sound now and then with indifferent wonder. All destruction had come for him to be contained within this car deck; here the ship loosed on itself all elements of annihilation; who could aid it from without? Alan caught the end of a chain which Corvet flung him and, though he knew it was useless, he carried it across from one stanchion to the next. Something, sweeping across the deck, caught him and carried him with it; it brought him before the coupled line of trucks which hurtled back and forth where the rails of track three had been. He was hurled before them and rolled over; something cold and heavy pinned him down; and upon him, the car trucks came.
But, before them, something warm and living—a hand and bare arm catching him quickly and pulling at him, tugged him a little farther on. Alan, looking up, saw Corvet beside him; Corvet, unable to move him farther, was crouching down there with him. Alan yelled to him to leap, to twist aside and get out of the way; but Corvet only crouched closer and put his arms over Alan; then the wreckage came upon them, driving them apart. As the movement stopped, Alan still could see Corvet dimly by the glow of the incandescent lamps overhead; the truck separated them. It bore down upon Alan, holding him motionless and, on the other side, it crushed upon Corvet's legs.
He turned over, as far as he could, and spoke to Alan. "You have been saving me, so now I tried to save you," he said simply. "What reason did you have for doing that? Why have you been keeping by me?"
"I'm Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas," Alan cried to him. "And you're Benjamin Corvet! You know me; you sent for me! Why did you do that?"
Corvet made no reply to this. Alan, peering at him underneath the truck, could see that his hands were pressed against his face and that his body shook. Whether this was from some new physical pain from the movement of the wreckage, Alan did not know till he lowered his hands after a moment; and now he did not heed Alan or seem even to be aware of him.
"Dear little Connie!" he said aloud. "Dear little Connie! She mustn't marry him—not him! That must be seen to. What shall I do, what shall I do?"
Alan worked nearer him. "Why mustn't she marry him?" he cried to Corvet. "Why? Ben Corvet, tell me! Tell me why!"