Complete Works of Emile Zola (1073 page)

The express ran from Havre to Barentin at its regular speed and without incident. It was Henri who first signalled the dray across the line, from his look-out at the top of his box, on issuing from the cutting. The van next to the tender was crammed with luggage, for the train carried a large number of passengers, who had landed from a mail-boat the previous evening. The headguard, very badly off for space, in the midst of this huge pile of trunks and portmanteaux, swaying to and fro in the vibration, had been standing at his desk classing waybills; and the small bottle of ink, suspended from a nail, never ceased swinging from side to side.

After passing the stations where he put out luggage, he had four or five minutes’ writing to do. Two travellers had got down at Barentin, and he had just got his papers in order, when, ascending and seating himself in his look-out, he cast a glance back and front along the line in accordance with his custom. It was his habit to pass all his spare time seated in this glazed sentry-box on the watch. The tender hid the driver, but thanks to his elevated position, he could often see further and sooner than the latter. And so, whilst the train was still bending round in the cutting, he perceived the obstacle ahead His astonishment was such that, in his terror, he lost command of his limbs, and, for an instant, even doubted what he saw. A few seconds were in consequence lost. The train was already out of the cutting, and a loud cry arose from the engine, when he made up his mind to pull the cord of the alarm-bell dangling in front of him.

Jacques, at this supreme moment, with his hand on the reversing-wheel, was looking without seeing, in a minute of absent-mindedness. He was thinking of confused and distant matters, from which the image of Séverine, even, had faded. The violent swinging and riot of the bell, the yells of Pecqueux behind him, brought him back to reality.

Pecqueux, who had raised the rod of the ash-pan, being dissatisfied with the draught, had caught sight of the scene on ahead as he leant over the rail to make sure of the speed. And Jacques, pale as death, saw and understood everything: the stone dray across the line, the engine tearing along, the frightful shock; and he witnessed it all with such penetrating distinctness, that he could even distinguish the grain in the two stones, while he already felt the concussion of the smash in his bones. He had violently turned round the reversing-wheel, closed the regulator, tightened the brake. He had reversed the engine, and was hanging unconsciously with one hand to the whistle handle, in the furious, but impotent determination to give warning, to have the colossal barricade in front removed.

But in the middle of this terrible scream of distress that rent the air, La Lison refused to obey. It continued its course in spite of all, barely slackening in speed. Since it had lost its power of starting off smoothly and its excellent vaporisation, in the snowstorm, it was no longer the docile engine of former days. It had now become whimsical and intractable, like an old woman with her chest ruined by a chill. It panted, resisted the brake, and still went on and on, in the ponderous obstinacy of its huge mass. Pecqueux, maddened with fright, sprang off. Jacques waited, inflexible, at his post, with the fingers of his right hand clutching the reversing-wheel, and those of his left resting on the whistle handle, unaware of what he was doing. And La Lison, smoking, puffing, amidst this piercing screech that never ceased, dashed against the stone dray with the enormous weight of the thirteen carriages it dragged behind it.

Then, eighty feet distant, beside the line, where they stood riveted in terror, Misard and Cabuche with their arms in the air, Flore with her eyes starting from her head, witnessed this frightful scene: the front part of the train rising up almost perpendicularly, seven carriages ascending one on the top of the other, to fall back with an abominable crash in a confused downfall of wreckage. The first three carriages were reduced to atoms, the four others formed a mountain, an entanglement of staved-in roofs, broken wheels, doors, chains, buffers, interspersed with pieces of glass. And what had been heard particularly, was the pounding of the machine against the stones — a heavy crash terminating in a cry of agony. La Lison, ripped open, toppled over to the left, on the other side of the stone dray; while the stones, split asunder, flew about in splinters as in the explosion of a mine, and four out of the five horses, bowled over and dragged along the ground, were killed on the spot. The back half of the train, comprising six carriages, remained intact They had come to a standstill without even leaving the metals.

Cries arose from the wreckage, appeals in words that were drowned by inarticulate howls, like those of wild beasts.

“Help! help! Oh! my God! I am dying! Help! help!”

In the midst of the riot and confusion of the smash, nothing could be heard or seen distinctly. La Lison, thrown over on the side, the under part rent open, was losing steam in rumbling puffs, similar to a furious rattle in the throat of a giant, at places where taps had been torn away, and where pipes had burst. An inexhaustible white cloud of vapour rolled round and round just on a level with the ground; while the embers, red as blood, fallen from the fire-box, added their black smoke. The chimney, in the violence of the shock, had entered the ground. At the place where it had stood, the frame was broken, bending the two frame-plates; and with the wheels in the air, similar to a monstrous steed, torn open by some formidable rip of a horn, La Lison displayed its twisted connecting-rods, its broken cylinders, its slide valves and their eccentrics flattened out — one huge, frightful wound, gaping in the open air, whence vitality continued issuing with the fracas of enraged despair. Beside the locomotive lay the horse, which had not been killed at once, with his two fore hoofs cut off and his belly ripped up. By his erect head, the neck stiffened in a spasm of atrocious pain, he could be perceived rattling the death agony with a terrible neigh, which failed to reach the ear in the thunder of the agonising engine.

The cries were stifled, unheard, lost, wafted away.

“Save me! Kill me! I am suffering too atrociously. Kill me! Kill me at once!”

In this deafening tumult, and blinding smoke, the doors of the carriages remaining intact opened, and a swarm of bewildered travellers sprang out. Falling down on the line, they struggled with feet and fists to rise again. Then as soon as they found themselves on firm ground, with the open country before them, they fled as fast as they could run, clearing the hedge, cutting across country, ceding to the sole instinct of getting far away from the danger, very, very far. Howling women and men disappeared in the depths of the woods.

Séverine, trampled under foot, with her hair about her back and her gown in shreds, at last got free; but she did not flee. Running towards the roaring engine, she found herself face to face with Pecqueux.

“Jacques! Jacques! He is safe, is he not?” she inquired. The fireman, who, by a miracle, had not even sprained a joint, was hurrying in the same direction, his heart swelling with pity at the idea of his driver being beneath that heap of wreckage. They had journeyed, they had suffered so much together in the continual fatigue of the high winds! And their engine, their poor engine, the good friend so cherished by both, which lay there on its back, losing its last breath of steam!

“I jumped off,” he stammered, “and know nothing, nothing at all. Come on, come on, quick!”

Beside the line they ran up against Flore, who had been watching them advancing towards her. Stupefied at the act she had committed, at the massacre she had accomplished, she had not yet moved It was all over, and it was well. Her only feeling was one of relief at having performed a necessity, without the least thought of pity for the pain of the other victims, whom she did not even notice. But when she recognised Séverine, her eyes opened immeasurably wide, and a cloud of frightful suffering darkened her pale countenance. Eh? what? this woman lived, when he was certainly dead! This piercing grief at her assassinated love, at this stab which she had given herself right in the heart, abruptly revealed to her all the abomination of her crime. She had done this, she had killed him, she had killed all these people! A loud cry lacerated her throat, she twisted her arms, she ran madly forward, exclaiming:

“Jacques, oh! Jacques! He is there. He was thrown backward, I saw him. Jacques, Jacques!” she called.

The death rattle of La Lison had become subdued. It had taken the form of a hoarse moan which grew weaker and weaker, and the increasing clamour of the wounded could now be heard in tones more and more heartrending. The smoke remained thick. The enormous heap of wreckage, whence issued the voices of the tortured and terrified beings, seemed enveloped in a black cloud of dust that remained motionless in the sun. What could be done? Where commence? How could these wretched victims be reached?

“Jacques!” Flore continued calling. “I tell you he looked at me,” she added, “and that he was thrown off there, under the tender. Come along quickly! Help me!”

Cabuche and Misard had just picked up Henri, the head-guard, who at the last second had also leapt from the train. He had dislocated his ankle, and they seated him on the ground against the hedge, where, half-stunned and mute, he watched the rescue of the passengers without appearing to suffer.

“Cabuche, come and help me!” cried Flore; “I tell you, Jacques is under there!”

The quarryman did not hear her. He ran to the assistance of the other wounded, and carried away a young woman whose legs were dangling down broken.

It was Séverine who rushed forward to answer the appeal of Flore.

“Jacques, Jacques?” said she inquiringly. “Where is he? I will help you.”

“That’s it, help me, you!”

Their hands met. Together they tugged at a broken wheel. But the delicate fingers of Séverine could do nothing, while the other with her sturdy fists broke through the obstacles.

“Be careful!” said Pecqueux, who also began to assist in the work.

And he sharply stopped Séverine just as she was going to tread on an arm cut off at the shoulder, which was still clothed in a blue cloth sleeve. She started back in horror. And yet she did not recognise the sleeve. It was an unknown arm that had rolled there from a body they would doubtless find elsewhere. This gave her such a fit of trembling that she seemed as if paralysed, standing weeping, watching the others working, incapable even of removing the splinters of glass which cut her hands.

Then the rescue of the dying, the search for the dead proved full of anguish and danger, for the live coal had set the pieces of wood alight, and to put a stop to this commencement of a fire it became necessary to throw shovels of earth over them. While someone ran to Barentin to ask for assistance, and a telegram left for Rouen, the removal of the wreckage proceeded as briskly as possible, everyone putting a hand to the work with great courage. Many of the runaways had returned, ashamed of their panic. But the relief party had to advance with infinite precautions, the transfer of each bit of wreckage requiring the utmost care, for fears were entertained lest the heap might perchance collapse and finish off the poor wretches in its midst. Some of the wounded emerged from the pile, still buried up to their chests, crushed as if in a vice, and howling. The rescuers laboured a quarter of an hour to deliver one victim as white as a sheet, who, far from complaining, said he felt no pain, and had nothing the matter with him; but when he had been extricated, he was found to be without his legs, and expired immediately, having neither seen nor felt the horrible mutilation in his fit of fright.

An entire family were dragged from a second-class compartment that had caught fire: the father and mother wounded in the knees, the grandmother with a broken arm; but neither did they feel their injuries. They were sobbing and calling their little girl who had disappeared in the smash — a fair-headed mite, barely three years old, who was discovered safe and sound under a strip of roofing with a merry, smiling face. Another little girl drenched in blood and with her poor, tiny hands crushed, had been carried aside pending the discovery of her parents. She remained alone and unknown, breathing with such difficulty that she could not utter a word; but her face was convulsed into an expression of ineffable terror as soon as anyone approached her.

The shock having twisted the iron-fittings of the carriage doors, it was found impossible to open them, and it became necessary to enter the compartments through the broken glass. Four corpses had already been taken out and placed side by side along the line. About ten wounded extended on the ground, were waiting near the dead bodies, there being no doctor to dress their wounds, and no assistance of any kind. The clearance of the wreckage had barely commenced, and a new victim was found under each bit of lumber, while the heap, streaming and palpitating with this human butchery, never seemed to decrease.

“But I tell you that Jacques is under there!” cried Flore, relieving herself by obstinately repeating this expression, which she uttered without reason, as the lamentation of her despair. “He is calling. There, there! Listen!” she added.

The tender lay buried beneath the carriages, which after running one atop of the other, had then tumbled over; and, in fact, since the locomotive had been making less noise, a heavy masculine voice could be distinguished roaring in the midst of the pile. As the work advanced the clamour of these agonising tones became more subdued, but they revealed such atrocious pain that the rescue party, unable to bear them any longer, gave way and called out themselves. Then, at last, when the excavators reached the victim whose legs they had liberated, and whom they were dragging towards them, the roar of suffering ceased. The man was dead!

“No,” said Flore, “it is not Jacques. He is lower down. He is underneath.”

And with her arms of a warrior woman, she raised the wheels and cast them to a distance, she twirled the zinc of the roofs, broke the doors, tore away the bits of chain. And as soon as she came to a corpse or a person who was wounded, she called for someone to remove the body, determined not to slacken for a second in her maddening search.