The mountain formed the seaward boundary of a large island, and the narrow strip of rocky shore upon which we stood was strewn with the
wreckage of a thousand gallant ships, while the bones of the luckless mariners shone white in the sunshine, and we shuddered to think how soon our own would be added to the heap.
Yet here and there some object had had the luck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the
wreckage. Never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal.
One instant all was quiet and stability--the next, and the world rocked, the tortured sides of the narrow passageway split and crumbled, great blocks of granite, dislodged from the ceiling, tumbled into the narrow way, choking it, and the walls bent inward upon the
wreckage. Beneath the blow of a fragment of the roof, Tarzan staggered back against the door to the treasure room, his weight pushed it open and his body rolled inward upon the floor.
The man who struck me went down across my body, Nelson followed him, and they say there were few unbroken windows in the
wreckage of the car that followed as the free-for-all fight had its course.
The machine, with its human freight, lifted in an upburst of smoke, and sank down a mass of
wreckage and death.
Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece of
wreckage and from there stared silently at Box Five on the grand tier.
He was able to push back the
wreckage with ease and step out.
An examination of the
wreckage showed that their greatest danger, now, lay in fire, for the flames were licking hungrily at the splintered wood of the wrecked cabin, and had already found a foothold upon the lower deck through a great jagged hole which the explosion had opened.
When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with
wreckage. The curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash.
Afterwards it used to turn up in all sorts of places--at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in cardboard boxes--till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden bowl containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string, small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute
wreckage that washes out of a man's life into such receptacles.
The Vaterland was no longer fighting the gale; her smashed and exploded engines throbbed no more; she was disabled and driving before the wind as smoothly as a balloon, a huge, windspread, tattered cloud of aerial
wreckage.
We had come quite close to the city when my attention was attracted toward a tall, black shaft that reared its head several hundred feet into the air from what appeared to be a tangled mass of junk or
wreckage, now partially snow-covered.