CHAPTER VIII
BENEATH THE WRECKAGE
“There are men under those burning walls!” some one yelled, hoarse with horror. “I saw them! They couldn’t get quite clear!”
Mrs. Powell reeled, a hand across her eyes.
She found Jane’s arm about her, Jane’s reassuring voice in her ear.
“It isn’t Uncle Dink! I know it isn’t! Oh, help me some one! She’s—she’s fainted!”
Many willing, kindly hands came to Jane’s aid and helped carry Mrs. Powell into a shoe store near by. Her temporary faintness was perhaps a good thing for both Mrs. Powell and Jane, since they were saved the harrowing sight of the frenzied rescue work that followed.
Men rushed to the scene of the calamity, carrying axes, saws, any implement with which they could hope to cut away the timbers that held the imprisoned men.
The thick stream from the hose of the fire department was turned upon this spot, and here the flames were quickly conquered. The men who had been caught beneath this outer edge of the falling wall would not be burned to death. It remained to be seen how badly they had been crushed by the weight of the débris.
“Here they are, Bill,” one of the firemen cried. “Just give me a hand, will you, with this board? Ataboy! Heave away, now!”
Several others came to the aid of these two, and, with the push of broad backs beneath it, the board heaved and gave back, carrying with it other timbers that had been either partly or wholly leaning against it.
At the moment a figure came flying toward them, the figure of a woman.
She was a wild apparition, her staring eyes and wild disordered hair redly illumined by the darting flames of the burning building.
At her elbow, holding her arm, vainly trying to comfort her, was a young girl.
“My husband!” cried the woman. “Where is he? Have you found him yet?”
One of the men held her off kindly but firmly, while the others went feverishly on with the work of rescue.
“Don’t come any closer, ma’am,” said the man who was holding poor frenzied Mrs. Powell. “You can’t do anything and you’ll only get in the way. If I was you,” he added after a moment when the shouts of the rescuers and their increased activity proclaimed that they had found one of the victims, “I’d look the other way.”
“My husband!” muttered Mrs. Powell, and to save her life she could not have taken her eyes from that awful scene. “Have they found him? Is he dead? Oh, let me go!”
“Please, please look away,” cried Jane, scarcely knowing what she said. “Oh, if we could only have kept you in that shop a little while longer! If you had only stayed there! If you would only come away now!”
Mrs. Powell took no more notice of her than if she had not spoken.
She started forward suddenly with a wild cry.
They had taken somebody from the wreck—were carrying him away.
The man who was holding her drew her back.
“If your name’s Powell, that ain’t your man,” he said. “Don’t look.”
Mrs. Powell was moaning now like an animal in pain.
Jane, agonized, took the cold hand in one of hers and pressed it to her face.
The expression of the older woman did not change. She continued to stare at the mass of wreckage where men worked, hacking, lifting, smashing, striving desperately to save the lives of the two men they thought were still imprisoned there.
Again they lifted something from the wreckage, and again Mrs. Powell started forward.
“Not yet, ma’am,” said the man at her side. “That ain’t your husband. Probably ain’t here at all,” he said in a voice he tried to make reassuringly matter-of-fact. “Probably out there in the crowd lookin’ for you, or maybe he’s home now, wondering where you’re at.”
Mrs. Powell took no more notice of him than she had of Jane.
“There’s another one under here, boys,” she heard one of the rescue workers say. “But I don’t think he’s hurt bad. Seems like a lot of those timbers have jammed and made a sort of shed over him. We’ve got to watch out we don’t loosen one of them and let the whole thing down on him.”
After that the men worked swiftly and silently while Jane held tight to Mrs. Powell’s hand, trembling, and the woman herself stared straight before her, uttering that queer heartbroken sound that Jane was to hear in imagination many times afterward.
“Here he is!” cried a voice suddenly. “And it’s like I said. He ain’t scarcely hurt!”
“Only my hands, boys,” came a voice that was faint and weak but striving to be jocular. “Be easy on ’em. They feel as if they were broken in sixteen places at once.”
Seeing that the third victim when helped by the men could stand shakily on his feet, Mrs. Powell’s captor released his hold on her arm.
“There’s your husband, ma’am,” he said in a relieved voice. “And lucky for you he wasn’t one of the other two fellows. Seems like they got a bit more than their share.”
Mrs. Powell was not listening. She had reached her husband’s side and was patting him all over incredulously.
“They say you’re not hurt badly,” she said, her lips quivering. “Is—is that true?”
“Let go my hand, old girl,” he said, as his wife grasped it in her eagerness. “My hands got caught under a couple of weights that felt like a ton apiece. Guess they got bunged up good and plenty.”
Mrs. Powell gasped as she held up one of the poor crushed bleeding hands. Her own hand was sticky with blood.
“Oh get a doctor, some one, quick!” she cried.
“Well, old lady,” Jane heard Mr. Powell say, as she ran to find some one who could attend to him, “I guess your husband’s out of a job now, for good and all!”