Crash

“ As a drowning man sees everything, to my sharp mental vision of the car spinning over and over toward the final crash, I added a picture of poor Miss Martha, bewildered all the way down, and too ill to do anything but wonder why the car would not stop. ”

“ Now a wagon was lifted almost edgeways on a huge block of stone, now it came down with a crash that threatened dislocation to every joint of the creaking mass; sometimes the poor animals, in utter despair at the sight of the almost perpendicular track, dashed at it at headlong speed, halted suddenly, and were almost dragged back by the weight of the huge vehicle in the rear; or, if they did succeed in gaining a ridge, overlooking a hollow in the mountain-side, would plunge recklessly on, and come down en masse, jumbled together in a confused heap. ”

“ Crash—“There, my lads, down goes his main-topmast—pepper him well, while they are blinded and confused among the wreck. Fire away—there goes the peak, shot away cleverly, close by the throat. Don’t cease firing, although his flag be down—it was none of his doing. There, my lads, there he has it again; you have shot away the weather fore topsail sheet, and he cannot get from under you.” ”

“ Sometimes there is a moving accident, too. Yesterday, for example, hearing a warning call and a crash, I was at the window in time to see an omnibus and a small wagon inextricably mixed, and to watch with what celerity a crowd can assemble. ”

“ Put on speed again. Car in front just visible through haze of dust. Hear distant crash. Confound the man, he's run into a dray! Just time to swerve to the right, and miss wreck of his car by an inch. Clumsy fellow, blocking my road in that way. At last clear space before me. Go up with [Pg 158] a rush. Wind whistles past my ears. Glorious! What's that? Run over an old woman? Very annoying. Almost upset my car. Awkward for next chap. Body right across the road. ”

“ At the crash she had rushed to the deck in night attire, and this action resulted in her rescue.
MANY INJURED
Then came the long row of stretchers with their inert occupants. Every man was alive, but in many cases that was all. In spite of arms and legs broken in the grinding of wreckage, many of these cripples had remained afloat long enough to be seen and gathered in. ”

“ it was as bright as glory, and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs—where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. ”

“ "I am waiting to plunge down, to shatter and crash, roar and boom, to bury your trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!" ”

“ The country where the wreck occurred is unbelievably wild and we can’t get near it with any transportation other than burros. The only thing that I can see to do is to gather together what transportation I can and head for the wreck on foot to rescue the packets and to bring out the bodies. Can you suggest anything better?”
“When do you expect to start?”
“As soon as I can get my pack train together. Possibly in three or four hours.”
“Carnes, are you sure that those bodies were broken into bits? An arm or a leg might easily be torn off in a complete crash.” ”

“ She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear. ”

“ There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. ”

“ Mr. Richard Thompson, the husband of Mrs. Viola Thompson, stated that he was standing in the kitchen of their home when he was startled by an "awful racket, the motor running just about as fast as I thought it could run". He said that he saw the airplane passing by the house and immediately heard the crash. Both he and Mrs. Thompson testified that they had not seen any lightning or heard thunder immediately preceding the crash. Mr. Thompson subsequently stated to investigators of the Board that he had seen no fire around the airplane prior to the crash. ”

“ A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central Exchange that Professor Challenger's receiver had been shattered. After that we abandoned all attempt at communication. ”

“ The town caught fire in several places, shells crashed and burst, and solid shot rained like hail. ”

“ I was now going, with wind and current, to destruction; and cold, hungry, and fatigued, was obliged again to sit down in the water to rest, when an extraordinary circumstance greatly relieved me. On examining the wreck, to see if it was possible to detach any part of it to steer by, I perceived something loose, entangled in a fork of the wreck, and so carried along. This I found to be a small trunk, bottom upwards, which, with some difficulty, I dragged up upon the barge. ”

“ But it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage—was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? What power could answer the question? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the other? Light does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. ”

“ At least, it must be a railway accident, there is so much noise, and you can see the dust that the wreckage scatters. Sometimes the train behind comes very close, but it too smashes on the wreckage of its forerunners. ”

“ Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one seat, smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same about each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. ”

“ The jolting of the wheels, as if they had left the rails, flung the passengers from their sluggish indifference. The lights expired, leaving a darkness almost palpable, through which one momentarily flinched from the splintering, destructive violence of a collision. ”

“ And who has not remarked that when an unlooked-for accident sets it a-jarring, by breaking up some minor wheel or axis, there follows a whole series of disasters—pressing the one upon the other, with stroke after stroke. ”

“ First the main portion of the wreckage was securely fastened to the forward bitts; then, breathless and gasping, more often under the water than out, they cut and hacked at the tangle of halyards, sheets, stays, and tackles. ”

“ Gibney, if you will remain here with this patient, we will hurry on to the wreck," said one of the physicians.
"We cannot leave here until the telegraph operator changes the signal," said the wreck-train conductor. "No other person has authority to touch the levers." ”

“ The scene at the moment the realisation of the impending disaster came over me is before me now as plainly as on that day, nearly five years ago,—the moving cars, the brakeman stumbling towards the side-ladder to descend, the fireman, who was more than a little deaf, walking away without seeing or hearing what had occurred, [248] and, in his place, a man (I had almost said a gentleman) standing by the switch-staff and gazing towards the cars with eyes that reflected the horror in my own ”

“ An accident which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance, of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense impression on the imagination of the crowd. ”

“ The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?—
Because one did survive the wreck. ”

“ The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him o'er the dead. ”

“ I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder, and strike me down. ”

“ From the same cause, the idea of a floating hull of an enormous wreck was given up. ”

“ In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain. ”

“ The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late—it does not matter when, in the end, it crushes us all. ”

“ The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. ”

“ Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck: under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months’ standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made. ”

“ So the laws of good driving forbade you to go off the magic ribbon except in extreme emergencies. You were ethically entitled to several inches of margin at the right-hand edge; and the man approaching you was entitled to an equal number of inches; which left a remainder of inches between the two projectiles as they shot by. It sounds risky as one tells it, but the heavens are run on the basis of similar calculations, and while collisions do happen, they leave time enough in between for universes to be formed, and successful careers conducted by men of affairs. ”

“ Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. ”

“ Blind as I was, I tried to get out
As the carriage fell in the ditch,
And was caught in the wheels and killed. ”

“ He rode as rides the hurricane;
He seem'd to swallow up the plain;
He rode as never man did ride,
He rode, for ghosts rode at his side,
And on his right a grizzled grim—
No, no, this tale is not of him. ”

“ Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind! My soul in storm is but a tattered sail, Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale; In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing: Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,— To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find. ”

“ With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound. ”

“ Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. ”

“ "You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn't to drive at all."
"I am careful."
"No, you're not."
"Well, other people are," she said lightly.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident." ”

“ I dreamed night after night that every one in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. ”

“ With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was evident. ”

“ Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it—thus! ”

“ My first thought was that a man who had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I received. ”

“ And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere. ”

“ I am full of thoughts,
A thousand wheels toss my incertain fears,
There is a storm in my hot boiling brains,
Which rises without wind. A horrid one. ”

“ "The dying does not amount to much," he said. "It is the thinking about it that hurts you mortals most. I've watched many a shipwreck at sea, and the people would howl and scream for hours before the ship broke up. Their terror was very enjoyable. But when the end came, they all drowned as peacefully as if they were going to sleep, so it didn't amuse me at all." ”