Connecticut western news., 1922-12-28

The fore trucks fell and, before the rear trucks reached the edge, the stern lifted and caught the car in the middle; it balanced, half over the wa ter, half over the deck. Corvet crouched under the car with crow bar; Alan and two others went with, him; they worked the car on until the weight of the end over the water tipped 1t down; the balance broke, and the car tumbled and dived. Corvet, hay ing cleared another hundred tons, leaped back, calling to the crew.
 They followed him again, unques- tioning, obedient. Alan followed close to him. It was not pity which stirred him now for Benjamin Corvet; nor was 1t bitterness; but it certainly was not contempt. Of all the ways in which he had fancied finding Benjamin Corvet he had never thought of seeing him like thisl .s
 It was, probably, only for a flash; but the great quality of leadership which he had once possessed, which Sh@rrili had described to Alan and which had been destroyed by the threat over him, had returned to him in this desperate emergency which he had ere ated. How much or how little of his own condition Corvet understood, Alan could not tell; 1t was plain only that he comprehended that he had been the cause of the catastrophe, and in his fierce will to repair it he not only dis regarded all risk to himself; he also had summoned up from within him and was spending the last strength of his spirit. But he was spending 1t in a, losing fight.
 He got off two more cars; yet the deck only dipped lower, and water washed farther and farther up over the fantail Men, leaping from before the charging cars, got caught in the murderous melee of iron and steel and wheels; mems shrill cries came amid the scream of metal. Alan, tug ging at a crate which had struck down a man, felt aid beside him and, turn Ing, he saw the priest whom he had passed on the stairs. The priest was bruised and bloody; this was not his first effort to aid Together they lifted an 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 1; 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 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, far niture and beams, swept back and forth, while the cars, burst and spiin- tered, became monstrous missiles hurt ling forward, sidewise, aslant, recoil- ing. Yet men, though scattered gingly, 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 clements of annihilation; who could aid 1t from without7 Alan caught the end of chain which COrvet flung him and, thougn he kneM 1t was useless he carried 1t across from one stanchisn to the next. Something, sweeping