tried to lift the ponderous locomotive as to move the tightly-wedged wreckage that imprisoned me; and as I glanced at the little patch of blue sky, now nearly blotted out in black smoke, an agonizing sense of my desperate situation filled my mind.
I opened my pocket-knife—it wasn't very sharp, but still it might serve me at a pinch; how much better to open an artery and quietly pass away than to be suffocated by smoke or roasted by fire! I sat thinking these desperate thoughts, and waiting, I presume, until my position should become absolutely unbearable, when I saw a man step across my little
"the locomotives reared up like horses, the cars shoved their tenders under them in such a way as to … raise the bridge off its abutments; . . . and then . . . a belated gravel train came . . . and plumped in on top of us."
glimpse of light. Having, fortunately, just refreshed myself by a breath of fresh air, I let a desperate yell out of me, and saw him stop and look all around, as though saying to himself, "What was that?" "Here! here!" I shouted; "right down in this hole under your feet!" He
