But in the middle of this terrible scream of distress that rent the air, La Lison refused to obey. It continued its course in spite of all, barely slackening in speed. Since it had lost its power of starting off smoothly and its excellent vaporisation, in the snowstorm, it was no longer the docile engine of former days. It had now become whimsical and intractable, like an old woman with her chest ruined by a chill. It panted, resisted the brake, and still went on and on, in the ponderous obstinacy of its huge mass. Pecqueux, maddened with fright, sprang off. Jacques waited, inflexible, at his post, with the fingers of his right hand clutching the reversing-wheel, and those of his left resting on the whistle handle, unaware of what he was doing. And La Lison, smoking, puffing, amidst this piercing screech that never ceased, dashed against the stone dray with the enormous weight of the thirteen carriages it dragged behind it. Then, eighty feet distant, beside the line, where they stood riveted in terror, Misard and Cabuche with their arms in the air, Flore with her eyes starting from her head, witnessed this frightful scene: the front part of the train rising up almost perpendicularly, seven carriages ascending one on the top of the other, to fall back with an abominable crash in a confused downfall of wreckage. The first three carriages were reduced to atoms, the four others formed a mountain, an entanglement of staved-in roofs, broken wheels, doors, chains, buffers, interspersed with pieces of glass. And what had been heard particularly, was the pounding of the machine against the stones--a heavy crash terminating in a cry of agony. La Lison, ripped open, toppled over to the left, on the other side of the stone dray; while the stones, split asunder, flew about in splinters as in the explosion of a mine, and four out of the five horses, bowled over and dragged along the ground, were killed on the spot. The back half of the train, comprising six carriages, remained intact. They had come to a standstill without even leaving the metals. Cries arose from the wreckage, appeals in words that were drowned by inarticulate howls, like those of wild beasts. "Help! help! Oh! my God! I am dying! Help! help!"