Morris shook his head, and the young man, nodding grimly, handed him a
bottle of some spirit.
'Take a drink of that,' he said; 'your friend looks as if he needed it
badly. We want every man we can get,' he added; 'there's terrible work
before us, and nobody should shirk. If you can do no more, you can carry
a stretcher.'
The doctor was hardly gone before Morris, under the spur of the dram,
awoke to the full possession of his wits.
'My God!' he cried. 'Uncle Joseph!'
'Yes,' said John, 'where can he be? He can't be far off. I hope the old
party isn't damaged.'
'Come and help me to look,' said Morris, with a snap of savage
determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and then, for
one moment, he broke forth. 'If he's dead!' he cried, and shook his fist
at heaven.
To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded,
or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty
people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course
of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the
boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour.
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