I remembered my flask, and unscrewing the stopper with difficulty,
clutched the mouth with my teeth and drank. After that I was sane and
collected. Now I could hear people tramping on the ground outside, and
see the flash of lanterns. In another moment a porter, whose silver
buttons gleamed in the darkness, was pulling me through the window.
"Hurt?"
"No, not I. But if any one else is, I'm a doctor."
"Here's a doctor, sir," he yelled to a gray-headed man near by. Then
he stood still, wondering what he should do next. I perceived in the
near distance the lights of a station.
"Is that Dover?"
"No, sir; Dover Priory. Dover's a mile further on. There was a goods
wagon got derailed on the siding just beyond the home signal, and it
blocked the down line, and the driver of the express ran right into
it, although the signal was against him--ran right into it, 'e did."
Other people were crawling out of the carriages now, and suddenly
there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running
about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon.
Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the
wind. The tender was twisted like a patent hairpin in the middle. The
first coach, a luggage-van, stood upright, and seemed scarcely
damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which
happily I had abandoned at Sittingbourne, was smashed out of
resemblance to a coach. The third one, from which I had just emerged,
looked fairly healthy, and the remaining three had not even left the
rails.
All ran to the smashed coach.
"There were two passengers in that coach," said the guard, who, having
been at the rear of the train, was unharmed.
"Are you counting me?" I asked. "Because I changed carriages at
Sittingbourne."
"Praise God for that, sir!" he answered. "There's only one, then--a
tall, severe-looking gent--in the first-class compartment."
Was it joy or sorrow that I felt at the thought of that man buried
somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not
unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation
at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my
peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive
foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and thwart and
blast my own.
The men hammered and heaved and chopped and sawed, and while they were
in the midst of the work some one took me by the sleeve and asked me
to go and attend to the engine-driver and stoker, who were being
carried into a waiting-room at the station. It is symptomatic of the
extraordinary confusion which reigns in these affairs that till that
moment the question of the fate of the men in charge of the train had
not even entered my mind, though I had of course noticed that the
engine was overturned. In the waiting-room it was discovered that two
local doctors had already arrived. I preferred to leave the
engine-driver to them. He was unconscious as he lay on a table. The
stoker, by his side, kept murmuring in a sort of delirium: "Bill, 'e was all dazed like--'e was all dazed like. I told him the
signal wasn't off. I shouted to him. But 'e was all dazed like."