He had now and then been
dully aware of a change in the noises. Now it would seem as if all else
was swallowed up in the sound of tremendous blows, as if the car were
being struck again and again by a mighty battering-ram. Then a chorus
of shouting went roaring up, as if an army cried. Noise and physical
sensation were too intimately blended to be separated; his brain
struggled in confusion, emerging now and then for a moment of
consecutive thought and sinking back into semi-unconsciousness as a
spent swimmer goes down, fighting wildly for life. He knew that a light
had come into the car. He saw it amid the smoke, and his first thought
was that it was flame. Dulled and half asphyxiated, he said to himself
now almost with indifference that the end had come. Then with a thrill
which for a moment aroused all his energies he recognized that it was
the glow of a lantern. He was aware that rescuers were close above him,
climbing down through the windows over his very head. He cried to them
in a paroxysm of appeal:--
"Save her! Save her!"
Whether he was heeded amid the babble of cries and all the noises which
seemed to swell to drown his voice, he could not tell, but in another
instant he felt that friendly hands had seized Miss Morison, and were
endeavoring to lift her insensible form.
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