in a careless sort of tone--

"Oh, it's nothing much, I think. My head feels rather queer; but
I've no bones broken. A collision, I suppose. Oughtn't we to get
out at once and see what's happened to the other people?"

Cyril Waring moved hastily to the door, and, letting down the window,
tried with a violent effort to turn the handle from the outside.
But the door wouldn't open. As often happens in such accidents, the
jar had jammed it. He tried the other side, and with some difficulty
at last succeeded in forcing it open. Then he descended cautiously
on to the six-foot-way, and held out his hand to help Elma from
the carriage.

It was no collision, he saw at once, but a far more curious and
unusual accident.

Looking ahead through the tunnel, all was black as night. A dense
wall of earth seemed to block and fill in the whole space in front
of them. Part of one broken and shattered carriage lay tossed about
in wild confusion on the ground close by. Their own had escaped.
All the rest was darkness.

In a moment, Cyril rightly divined what must have happened to the
train. The roof of the tunnel had caved in on top of it. At least
one carriage--the one immediately in front of them--had been
crushed and shattered by the force of its fall. Their own was the
last, and it had been saved as if by a miracle. It lay just outside
the scene of the subsidence.