BENEATH THE WRECKAGE
“There are men under those burning walls!” some one yelled, hoarse
with horror. “I saw them! They couldn’t get quite clear!”
Mrs. Powell reeled, a hand across her eyes.
She found Jane’s arm about her, Jane’s reassuring voice in her ear.
“It isn’t Uncle Dink! I know it isn’t! Oh, help me some one!
She’s--she’s fainted!”
Many willing, kindly hands came to Jane’s aid and helped carry Mrs.
Powell into a shoe store near by. Her temporary faintness was perhaps
a good thing for both Mrs. Powell and Jane, since they were saved the
harrowing sight of the frenzied rescue work that followed.
Men rushed to the scene of the calamity, carrying axes, saws, any
implement with which they could hope to cut away the timbers that
held the imprisoned men.
The thick stream from the hose of the fire department was turned upon
this spot, and here the flames were quickly conquered. The men who
had been caught beneath this outer edge of the falling wall would not
be burned to death. It remained to be seen how badly they had been
crushed by the weight of the débris.
“Here they are, Bill,” one of the firemen cried. “Just give me a
hand, will you, with this board? Ataboy! Heave away, now!”
Several others came to the aid of these two, and, with the push of
broad backs beneath it, the board heaved and gave back, carrying
with it other timbers that had been either partly or wholly leaning
against it.
At the moment a figure came flying toward them, the figure of a woman.
She was a wild apparition, her staring eyes and wild disordered hair
redly illumined by the darting flames of the burning building.
At her elbow, holding her arm, vainly trying to comfort her, was a
young girl.
“My husband!” cried the woman. “Where is he? Have you found him yet?”
One of the men held her off kindly but firmly, while the others went
feverishly on with the work of rescue.
“Don’t come any closer, ma’am,” said the man who was holding poor
frenzied Mrs. Powell. “You can’t do anything and you’ll only get in
the way. If I was you,” he added after a moment when the shouts of
the rescuers and their increased activity proclaimed that they had
found one of the victims, “I’d look the other way.”
“My husband!” muttered Mrs. Powell, and to save her life she could
not have taken her eyes from that awful scene. “Have they found him?
Is he dead? Oh, let me go!”
“Please, please look away,” cried Jane, scarcely knowing what she
said. “Oh, if we could only have kept you in that shop a little while
longer! If you had only stayed there! If you would only come away
now!”
Mrs. Powell took no more notice of her than if she had not spoken.
She started forward suddenly with a wild cry.
They had taken somebody from the wreck--were carrying him away.
The man who was holding her drew her back.
“If your name’s Powell, that ain’t your man,” he said. “Don’t look.”
Mrs. Powell was moaning now like an animal in pain.
Jane, agonized, took the cold hand in one of hers and pressed it to
her face.
The expression of the older woman did not change. She continued to
stare at the mass of wreckage where men worked, hacking, lifting,
smashing, striving desperately to save the lives of the two men they
thought were still imprisoned there.
Again they lifted something from the wreckage, and again Mrs. Powell
started forward.
“Not yet, ma’am,” said the man at her side. “That ain’t your husband.
Probably ain’t here at all,” he said in a voice he tried to make
reassuringly matter-of-fact. “Probably out there in the crowd lookin’
for you, or maybe he’s home now, wondering where you’re at.”
Mrs. Powell took no more notice of him than she had of Jane.
“There’s another one under here, boys,” she heard one of the rescue
workers say. “But I don’t think he’s hurt bad. Seems like a lot of
those timbers have jammed and made a sort of shed over him. We’ve got
to watch out we don’t loosen one of them and let the whole thing down
on him.”
After that the men worked swiftly and silently while Jane held tight
to Mrs. Powell’s hand, trembling, and the woman herself stared
straight before her, uttering that queer heartbroken sound that Jane
was to hear in imagination many times afterward.
“Here he is!” cried a voice suddenly. “And it’s like I said. He ain’t
scarcely hurt!”
“Only my hands, boys,” came a voice that was faint and weak but
striving to be jocular. “Be easy on ’em. They feel as if they were
broken in sixteen places at once.”
Seeing that the third victim when helped by the men could stand
shakily on his feet, Mrs. Powell’s captor released his hold on her
arm.
“There’s your husband, ma’am,” he said in a relieved voice. “And
lucky for you he wasn’t one of the other two fellows. Seems like they
got a bit more than their share.”
Mrs. Powell was not listening. She had reached her husband’s side and
was patting him all over incredulously.
“They say you’re not hurt badly,” she said, her lips quivering.
“Is--is that true?”
“Let go my hand, old girl,” he said, as his wife grasped it in her
eagerness. “My hands got caught under a couple of weights that felt
like a ton apiece. Guess they got bunged up good and plenty.”
Mrs. Powell gasped as she held up one of the poor crushed bleeding
hands. Her own hand was sticky with blood.
“Oh get a doctor, some one, quick!” she cried.
“Well, old lady,” Jane heard Mr. Powell say, as she ran to find some
one who could attend to him, “I guess your husband’s out of a job
now, for good and all!”