“What’s happened?  What’s happened?  What’s happened?”

She was whispering the question over and over again in a queer, whimpering voice without the remotest idea of what she was saying.  When a stinging pain shot through her arm, as a jagged point of broken glass bit into the flesh, and with a scream of utter, unreasoning terror she let go her hold.

The next moment she felt herself grasped and held by a pair of arms, and a voice spoke to her out of the darkness.

“Are you hurt? . . .  My God, are you hurt?”

With a sob of relief she realised that it was the voice of her fellow-traveller.  He was here, close to her, something alive and human in the midst of this nightmare of awful, unspeakable fear, and she clung to him, shuddering.

“Speak, can’t you?” His utterance sounded hoarse and distorted.  “You’re hurt—?” And she felt his hands slide searchingly along her limbs, feeling and groping.

“No—­no.”

“Thank God!” He spoke under his breath.  Then, giving her a shake:  “Come, pull yourself together.  We must get out of this.”

He fumbled in his pocket and she heard the rattle of a matchbox, and an instant later a flame spurted out in the gloom as he lit a bundle of matches together.  In the brief illumination she could see the floor of the compartment steeply tilted up and at its further end what looked like a huge, black cavity.  The whole side of the carriage had been wrenched away.

“Come on!” exclaimed the man, catching her by the hand and pulling her forward towards that yawning space.  “We must jump for it.  It’ll be a big drop.  I’ll catch you.”

At the edge of the gulf he paused.  Below, with eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, she could discern figures running to and fro, and lanterns flashing, while shouts and cries rose piercingly above a continuous low undertone of moaning.

“Stand here,” he directed her.  “I’ll let myself down, and when I call to you—­jump.”

She caught at him frantically.

“Don’t go—­don’t leave me.”

He disengaged himself roughly from her clinging hands.

“It only wants a moment’s pluck,” he said, “and then you’ll be safe.”

The next minute he was over the side, hanging by his hands from the edge of the bent and twisted flooring of the carriage, and a second afterwards she heard him drop.  Peering out, she could see him standing on the ground below, his arms held out towards her.

“Jump!” he called.

But she shrank from the drop into the darkness.

“I can’t!” she sobbed helplessly.  “I can’t!”

He approached a step nearer, and the light from some torch close at hand flashed onto his uplifted face.  She could see it clearly, tense and set, the blue eyes blazing.

“God in heaven!” he cried furiously.  “Do what I tell you. Jump!”

The fierce, imperative command startled her into action, and she jumped blindly, recklessly, out into the night.  There was one endless moment of uncertainty, and then she felt herself caught by arms like steel and set gently upon the ground.