end of the crate; they bent—Alan stepped back, and the priest knelt alone, his lips repeating the prayer for absolution. Screams of men came from behind; and the priest rose and turned. He saw men caught between two wrecks of cars crushing together; there was no moment to reach them; he stood and raised his arms to them, his head thrown back, his voice calling to them, as they died, the words of absolution.
Three more cars at the cost of two more lives the crew cleared, while the sheathing of ice spread over the steel inboard, and dissolution of all the cargo became complete. Cut stone and motor parts, chasses and castings, furniture and beams, swept back and forth, while the cars, burst and splintered, became monstrous missiles hurtling forward, sidewise, aslant, recoiling. Yet men, though scattered singly, tried to stay them by ropes and chains while the water washed higher and higher. Dimly, far away, deafened out by the clangor, the steam whistle of Number 25 was blowing the four long blasts of distress; Alan heard the sound now and then with indifferent wonder. All destruction had come for him to be contained within this car deck; here the ship loosed on itself all elements of annihilation; who could aid it from without? Alan caught the end of a chain which Corvet flung him and, though he knew it was useless, he carried it across from one stanchion to the next. Something, sweeping across the deck, caught him and carried him with it; it brought him before the coupled line of trucks which hurtled back and forth where the rails of track three had been. He was hurled before them and rolled over; something cold and heavy pinned him down; and upon him, the car trucks came.
