, before the rear trucks reached the edge, the
stern lifted and caught the car in the middle; it balanced, half over
the water, half over the deck. Corvet crouched under the car with a
crowbar; Alan and two others went with him; they worked the car on
until the weight of the end over the water tipped it down; the balance
broke, and the car tumbled and dived. Corvet, having cleared another
hundred tons, leaped back, calling to the crew.

They followed him again, unquestioning, obedient. Alan followed close
to him. It was not pity which stirred him now for Benjamin Corvet; nor
was it 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 this!

It was, probably, only for a flash; but the great quality of leadership
which he once had possessed, which Sherrill 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 created. How much or how little
of his own condition Corvet understood, Alan could not tell; it 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
disregarded 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 it 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. New avalanches of iron
descended as box cars above burst open; monstrous dynamo drums,
broad-banded steel wheels and splintered crates of machinery battered
about. Men, leaping from before the charging cars, got caught in the
murderous melee of iron and steel and wheels; men's shrill cries came
amid the scream of metal. Alan, tugging at a crate which had struck
down a man, felt aid beside him and, turning, 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; 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 th