The trolley was packed with people going out to see
what had happened, so Jimmie had plenty of company
and conversation on the way. But when he came
to his stop, he got off and walked alone, for the
others were going to the explosives plant, and they
rode a mile or so farther on the car.
Never would Jimmie forget that journey—that
walk of nightmares. The road was pitch-dark,
and before he had gone more than half the distance,
he stumbled over something, and fell head-foremost.
He got up, and groped, and discovered that it was
a tree, lying prone across the road. He searched
his mind, and remembered a great dead tree that stood
at that spot. Could the explosion have knocked
it down?
He went on, feeling his way more cautiously, yet goaded
to greater speed by his fears. A little way further
was a farm-house, and he went into the yard and shouted,
but got no reply. The yard was covered with shingles,
apparently blown from the roof. He went on, more
frightened than ever.
He came to a turn in the road which he knew was less
than half a mile from his home; and here there were
several horses and wagons tied, but no one to answer
his calls. The road passed through a wood; but
apparently there was no road any more—the
trees had been picked up bodily and thrown across
it. Jimmie had to grope this way and that, and
he ran a piece of broken branch into his cheek, and
by that time was almost ready to cry with fright.
He knew that his home was two miles from the explosives
plant, and he could not conceive how an explosion
could have done such damage at such a distance.
He saw a lantern ahead, bobbing this way and that,
and he shouted louder than ever, and finally succeeded
in persuading the bearer of the lantern to wait for
him. It proved to be a farmer who lived some
way back; he knew no more than Jimmie did, and they
made their way together. Beyond the woods, the
road was littered with loose dirt, bushes, bits of
fence and rubbish, burned black. “It must
have been near here,” declared the man, and
added words which caused Jimmie’s heart almost
to stand still. “It must have been on the
railroad track!”
They came to a little rise, from which in day-time
the line of the railroad was visible. They saw
lanterns, many of them, moving here and there like
a swarm of fire-flies. “Come this way,”
Jimmie begged of the farmer, and ran towards his home.
The road was buried under masses of earth, as if thousands
of steam-shovels had emptied their contents on it.
When they came to where the fence of Jimmie’s
house ought to have been, they found no fence, but
a slide of loose earth that had never been there before.
Where the apple-tree had been there was nothing; where
the lawn had been there was a pitch down a hill, and
where the house had been was a huge valley, seeming
in the darkness a bottomless abyss!
