Before Maurice could realize what the
outburst meant, there followed a horrible shock which seemed to
dislocate every joint in his body. Berenice was thrown violently into
his arms, flung as a dead weight, and shrieking as she fell against his
breast. Instinctively he clasped her, and in the terror of the moment
it was for a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her
than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of
crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam,
of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he
had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears
and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate
giants. The end of the car before him was beaten in; splinters of wood
and fragments of glass flew about him like hail; it was like being
without warning exposed to the fiercest fire of batteries of an
implacable enemy. A woman was dashed at his very feet torn and
bleeding, her face mangled so that he grew sick and faint at the sight;
pinned against the seat opposite, transfixed by a long splinter as with
a javelin, was the dapper young man, horribly writhing and mowing, and
then stark dead in an instant, staring with wide open eyes and
distorted face like a ghastly mask.
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