The Beast Within - Emile Zola [184]
Jacques at that crucial moment was in a world of his own, standing with his hand on the reversing wheel, gazing into space and dreaming of vague, faraway things. He had even for a moment stopped thinking about Séverine. He was brought to his senses by the frantic ringing of the bell and a loud scream from Pecqueux just behind him. Pecqueux had raised the damper in the ash-box because he didn’t think the fire was drawing properly and had leaned out to check the speed. It was then that he had seen what lay ahead. And now Jacques saw too. He saw everything and knew what was about to happen. He went deathly pale. The wagon lay across the track. The train was hurtling towards it. There was going to be a terrible crash. He saw it clearly and sharply. He could even make out the grain on the two blocks of stone. Already in his bones he could feel the shock of the collision. It could not be avoided. He frantically turned the reversing wheel, shut off steam and applied the brakes.5 He put the engine into reverse and leaned out of the cab, tugging desperately at the whistle in the frenzied and forlorn hope that the warning might be heard and the fearsome obstacle removed. The whistle gave out a long, agonized wail of distress that rent the air. But La Lison was not responding; she simply ran on ahead, hardly slowing down at all. She was no longer the willing creature she once had been. Since the blizzard, she hadn’t steamed as well and was not as quick off the mark; she had become temperamental and crotchety, like a woman who had caught a cold on her chest and had suddenly aged. She let out steam and shuddered as Jacques applied the brake. But there was no stopping her; she was carried forward under the powerful impetus of her own weight. Pecqueux, in sheer terror, leaped from the footplate. Jacques stood stiffly at the controls, his right hand on the reversing wheel and the other, without him realizing it, still pulling at the whistle, waiting for the worst. La Lison, in a cloud of steam and smoke, her whistle still screaming wildly, crashed into the wagon with the full weight of the thirteen carriages she drew behind her.6
Twenty metres away, standing beside the track, transfixed with horror, Misard and Cabuche, their arms in the air, and Flore, her eyes starting from her head, watched the catastrophe unfold. They saw the train being flung upwards, seven carriages piling on top of each other and then, with a sickening crash, falling back into a twisted mass of wreckage. The three leading carriages were reduced to nothing. Four others lay in a tangled heap of torn-off roofs, broken wheels, carriage doors, couplings, buffers and pieces of broken glass. They had heard the locomotive crash into the stones, a dull crunching sound followed by a scream of agony. La Lison was completely crushed and had been thrown to the left on top of the wagon. The stones had been split apart and filled the air with a cloud of splinters as if they had been blasted from a quarry. Of the five horses, four had been knocked off their feet, dragged along the ground and killed outright. The rest of the train, a further six carriages, was still intact and had come to a stop without even leaving the rails.
People began to shout. There were calls for help, which tailed off into inarticulate cries of pain.
‘Help me! Save me! Oh God, I’m dying! Help! Help!’
There was a confusion