WRECK AND RESCUE.
“Gee! She’s a beaut, isn’t she, Dick?”
The Buffalo Express, on board of which Dick Armstrong and his friend,
Joe Fletcher, were traveling to New York, had just stopped at
Poughkeepsie, and the exclamation was drawn from Joe by the appearance
in the car of a lovely young girl of apparently fifteen years of age,
accompanied by a fine-looking gentleman of perhaps forty, who seemed to
be her father.
“She is pretty, for a fact,” admitted Dick, casting a look of
admiration at the young lady.
She had light hair, blue eyes, and dimpled cheeks, and her smile was an
entrancing one as she turned to say something to the gentleman when he
seated himself by her side.
The train soon started on again and was presently speeding down the
bank of the Hudson River at a fifty-mile clip.
It was a dull afternoon early in November, and the landscape looked
brown and unpicturesque.
The great river flowed sluggishly along, and as they passed a string
of canal-boats preceded by a snorting tug, the boys thought of Captain
Beasley and the Minnehaha.
During the next hour a large portion of Dick’s attention was centred on
the pretty girl who had boarded the train at Poughkeepsie.
“Ever hear of Spuyten Duyvil?” asked Joe.
“Yes,” answered Dick.
“It’s not far above Manhattan Island, and we’ll pass there soon. Guess
I’ll have another drink.”
Joe went to the end of the car where the tank was, but whether his
numerous drinks since leaving Albany had used up all the water, or
because there was something the matter with the cock, certain it is Joe
had to go into the next car to get what he wanted.
He had probably been gone a couple of minutes and Dick was watching
the pretty stranger for perhaps the hundredth time, when something
startling occurred which changed the whole aspect of affairs in the
twinkling of an eye.
A tremendous shock stopped the train’s momentum and piled the cars
on top of each other, hurling a couple down the embankment into the
river, almost every car becoming a shapeless wreck, and human beings,
full of life and hope a moment before, were suddenly ushered into
eternity or maimed and mangled for life.
It was a rear-end collision.
A terrible scene was presented to Dick’s gaze when he recovered his
scattered senses.
He was stunned by the shock and made giddy by the wild vaulting of the
car as it leaped the rails, swung around and buried its rear end in the
Hudson.
He was bruised and badly shaken up, but he was not seriously injured.
Fortunately Dick was endowed a remarkable degree of self-possession.
Finding he was not hurt, he struggled out from beneath the wreckage
which had overwhelmed him.
His first thought was for Joe, but the boy was not in sight, which,
under the circumstances, was hardly to be wondered at.
Then the groans and screams of the mangled passengers pinned under the
wreck confused him and distracted his attention from his chum.
Perhaps it is not strange that the fair young girl who had occupied the
opposite seat in the car came to his mind, for his eyes and thoughts
had been upon her at the moment of the catastrophe.
He did not see her among the men and women who were disengaging
themselves from the shapeless debris.
“Is she dead?” he almost groaned, as he thought of that golden head and
lithe figure smashed beyond recognition.
Then he wondered if her father had escaped, for, like Joe, he had a
short time before the accident gone forward into the smoking-car, and
the boy saw as through a mist the locomotive, express-baggage, and
smoking cars back slowly down on the wreck, a crowd of wild and excited
passengers tumbling off the rear platform of the latter.
It was impossible for anyone to say just what had caused the trouble,
but it might have been a broken axle or a suddenly loosened rail that
had snapped the connection between the cars.
A portion of the top of the car Dick had just wriggled from under lay
near him, and seeing a woman’s foot exposed beneath, he exerted his
strength and raised one end a bit.
It rested heavily upon the form of the fair passenger from Poughkeepsie.
The sight aroused all his energies.
With desperate eagerness he put his shoulder to the heavy fragment that
was crushing out the girl’s life, and shifted it aside.
Then he bent down and lifted her in his arms.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, anxiously, “I believe she is dead.”
She looked the picture of death, for her eyes were closed and her
pallid cheek was stained with blood.
Dick, hardly knowing what to do, bore her down to the river edge and
splashed the water into her face, eagerly watching for some sign of
returning animation.
He rubbed her temples and chafed her hands, but the task seemed
hopeless.
He was about to abandon his efforts in despair, when an almost
imperceptible sigh gladdened his heart and caused him to renew his
exertions.
With his handkerchief he washed away the bloodstains, and found that
she was only slightly cut just above the ear.
In a few moments she recovered consciousness and cast a bewildered
glance around her.
She tried to raise herself, but with a little cry of pain she sank back
in Dick’s arms and lay there staring up into his face and scarcely
comprehending what he was doing for her.
Suddenly the fearful nature of the catastrophe dawned upon her mind,
and clutching at the lad’s arm with one little hand, her other arm
lying limp and helpless at her side, she raised up again.
“My father!” she cried with pathetic earnestness. “Where is he?”
“I saw him leave you and go into the next car before the crash came,”
said Dick.
“He went to the smoking-car,” she moaned. “Perhaps--oh, perhaps he
was----”
“If he reached the smoking-car, he is safe,” said Dick, encouragingly.
“That car was not damaged. I can see it from here,” and the boy nodded
his head in the direction where it stood on the track. “And I see your
father now!” he exclaimed suddenly. “He is running this way. What is
your name?”
“Jennie Nesbitt,” she replied faintly.
“Hi, hi! Mr. Nesbitt!” cried Dick, motioning to the girl’s father.
The gentleman started and paused when he heard his name pronounced.
Looking wildly about he saw Dick signaling to him, and he easily
guessed that the recumbent figure in the boy’s arms was his daughter,
and he rushed down to the spot.
“Don’t say she is dead!” he exclaimed frantically, the tears streaming
down his cheeks. “Jennie, darling, speak to your father!” and he knelt
down and seized her nerveless hand.
A cry of pain broke from the girl.
“Are you much hurt, my darling?” asked Mr. Nesbitt, anxiously, taking
her in his arms and kissing her tenderly.
“I don’t know, father,” she answered faintly, putting her uninjured arm
around his neck. “My left arm is very numb.”
“I should be obliged to you if you would assist me in carrying my
daughter up this bank,” said the gentleman to Dick.
Between them they carried her across the tracks and laid her on the
faded grass under the trees, where a score or more of the injured had
already been placed to await the attention of the physicians that had
been telegraphed for.
“Can I be of any further use?” asked Dick, wistfully, after he had
explained how he discovered the young lady under the section of the
car-roof and removed her to the waterside in the hope of bringing her
to. “I should like to hunt up my chum, who was traveling with me.”
“I will not detain you,” said Mr. Nesbitt, grasping him by the hand.
“You have been very good to my daughter. She probably owes her life to
you. I can never sufficiently thank you for the service you have this
day rendered to me,” he said with grateful earnestness.
“I am glad I was able to do something for your daughter,” replied Dick,
simply.
“Be sure we shall not forget you. I think you said your name was
Richard Armstrong?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You will not forget that, Jennie. Here is my business card, Mr.
Armstrong. You must call at my office, for we want to know you better.”
“Thank you; I will do so at the first chance,” replied the boy,
noticing that the address was a New York City one.
“Perhaps I shall see you again before you leave here.”
“We shall be glad if you come back as soon as you find some trace of
your friend, who, I think, probably has escaped, since, like myself,
you say he went forward before the accident occurred.”
The wounded and the dead were now being rapidly taken from the pile of
ruins by those who were uninjured.
Dick, gazing upon the work of the rescuers, saw Joe helping like a good
fellow to clear away a part of the splintered car in which he and his
chum had been riding.
With a shout of joy Dick ran up and seized him by the arm.
“Thank goodness, you’re safe!” he said, delightedly.
“Gee wilikens!” cried Joe, throwing his arms about him in a spasm of
pleasure. “I was almost certain you were a goner. How did you manage to
get out of this ruin without a scratch? Why, it’s a perfect miracle!
Half the car is smashed into toothpicks.”
For an hour Dick and Joe worked hard to help the unfortunates who had
suffered from the wreck.
By that time the force of doctors sent from New York had arrived and
were helping the half-dozen local practitioners who had previously been
brought to the scene of the disaster.
There being nothing for Dick and his chum to do, the former thought he
would like to know how the young lady he had assisted was getting on.
He found Mr. Nesbitt and his daughter in the same spot, and presented
Joe to them.
They were glad to learn that Dick had found his friend uninjured.
A surgeon had set Miss Jennie’s broken arm, which was beginning to pain
her a good deal.
One of the train hands now came up and said they had better board
one of the cars of the relief train which was about to start for the
metropolis.
Miss Nesbitt said she thought she could walk as far as the car if Dick
and her father supported her.
She was made as comfortable on one of the seats as circumstances
permitted, and in a few minutes the train started with its melancholy
load of maimed, dead, and dying.
At the Grand Central Station a carriage was obtained by Dick to take
the injured young miss and her father home.
The girl bade the lad a grateful good-bye and exacted a promise that he
would call and see her at her home very soon.
“And don’t forget I shall expect to see you at my office in a day or
two,” said Mr. Nesbitt as the vehicle drove off.
“Gee!” said Joe as they watched the carriage disappear around the
corner. “You may have done a big thing for yourself for all you know,
Dick, old boy. You’ve made yourself solid in that quarter, all right.
And a good friend goes a long way in this city sometimes. Come along,
now. I’ll pilot you down to my old boarding-place.”
Whereupon they walked to Third Avenue and took a southbound car.