MIDNIGHT AT THE WRECK.
At twelve o’clock quietness had settled down upon the scene. The
streets were deserted. All had formed the impression that the bodies
were to be burned, and had gone to their homes, leaving the wreck still
burning, and the dead to be consumed. The engines had been ordered to
their houses. The lights glimmered from the homes where the wounded
were lying. A few were at the wreck. The expressman guarding the
treasures in the safe, sat solitary and alone through the long hours,
while the flames which were burning precious bodies, crackled and threw
their lurid light across the scene. The smell of burning flesh pervaded
the air even half a mile away. A horrid sight was presented in the
awful valley. The flames which had blazed so high had consumed the wood
and furniture of the train. The gilded palaces were reduced to mere
skeletons of iron. The bridge lay a mere network of blackened beams.
The trucks and wheels and heavy rods were lying in every direction. But
beneath these horrid ribs of death, lay the blackened bodies of men,
women and children, burned, and still burning, amid the snow and ice.
Blue tongues of fire shot here and there amid the blackened mass, as
if some unseen monster were still licking up the life of its unburied
victims. The white snow lay like a winding sheet along the valley, but
the skeleton was in the midst with the tall abutments towering above
and the precious bodies silent in death beneath the ruins.
A long line of bodies lay packed on the bridge just above the water of
the stream. They were covered with trucks and brakes, and heavy bars,
and the debris of wood and the ashes of the wreck. Packed in a horrid
mass they lay, crushed and broken, and blackened by the smoke and heat.
Ghastly forms lay in this open grave. Headless, armless trunks were
packed with the broken limbs, and the heads from which the brains
were oozing, while the stumps of arms seemed lifted from the blackened
heaps as if in mute supplication--too shocking for any human heart. The
delicate form of a mother lay beside her little child, but both reduced
to mere black lumps with scarcely a semblance to a human form. A full
sized woman lay amid the mass but with no sign of either legs or arms
except the broken bones which had been crushed away by the fall. Bodies
of men also lay cut completely asunder, and presenting only the half of
the human form--an awful, sickening sight.
Everywhere through the valley there were bodies lying silent in death.
The pale flames which flickered here and there, betokened where many of
them lay. Underneath the horrid bars of iron, on the black, deceitful
ice, in the watery depths of the unconscious stream, packed in heaps
underneath the burning cars--were the dead! It was an appalling and
terrifying scene. The darkness and loneliness, and the very desertion,
were enough, but through the very nerves there came the horrid
consciousness of the many, many dead.
Far away were their friends, the night was lonely, and the storm was
pitiful, but scattered through that grave were the bodies of the
dead. It was hard to realize it, but, to the hearts of friends, these
unburied were no strangers, and yet they burned, in loneliness.
The railroad authorities came at half past one o’clock. Five surgeons
from the Homœopathic College, in Cleveland, the superintendent, the
assistant superintendent, the train-despatcher and others. The wounded
were in their beds at the time. The fireman was at the Eagle Hotel.
The engineer was at Mr. Apthorp’s, two other persons, also, who needed
surgical operations, were at the same house. The surgeons of the road,
as they arrived, sought first the employees--the fireman and the
engineer--and to these, gave their professional attention. The surgeons
of the village had already attended to the passengers, had dressed the
wounds of most of them, and were waiting for the proper reaction, to
perform the amputation on those whose limbs were broken.
Ten surgeons were, at one time, crowded into one small house, where
the worst cases were placed. By morning, however, the amputation was
performed by Dr. J. C. Hubbard, assisted by Drs. Fricker and Case, and
about twenty of the wounded, including the fireman and engineer, were
removed to the hospital in Cleveland. This relieved many of those who
were at the Eagle Hotel, as they found comfortable quarters at the
hospital, and the rest were taken into rooms where a fire could be
built, and where a carpet covered the floor; but through all the night
the fire continued to burn. The haggard dawn drove the darkness out
of the valley of the shadow of death. Seldom was revealed a ghastlier
sight. On either side of the ravine, frowned the dark and bare arches
from which the treacherous bridge had fallen, while, at their base, the
great mass of ruins covered the men and women and children, who had so
suddenly been called to death. The cherished bodies lay where they had
fallen, or where they had been placed, in the hurry and confusion of
the night.
Piles of iron lay on the thick ice or bedded in the shallow stream. The
fires smouldered in great heaps where many of the helpless victims had
been consumed; while men went about, in wild confusion, seeking some
trace of their friends among the wounded or dead.
[Illustration]