districts a supply of comparatively pure air that, for some minutes
after the general disaster, maintained human life. Be this as it may,
the long platforms of Cannon Street Underground Station presented a
fearful spectacle. A train stood at the down platform. The electric
lights burned fitfully. This platform was crowded with men, who fought
each other like demons, apparently for no reason, because the train was
already packed as full as it could hold. Hundreds were dead under foot,
and every now and then a blast of foul air came along the tunnel,
whereupon hundreds more would relax their grips, and succumb. Over
their bodies the survivors fought, with continually thinning ranks. It
seemed to me that most of those in the standing train were dead.
Sometimes a desperate body of fighters climbed over those lying in
heaps and, throwing open a carriage door, hauled out passengers already
in, and took their places, gasping. Those in the train offered no
resistance, and lay motionless where they were flung, or rolled
helplessly under the wheels of the train. I made my way along the wall
as well as I could to the engine, wondering why the train did not go.
The engineer lay on the floor of his cab, and the fires were out.

Custom is a curious thing. The struggling mob, fighting wildly for
places in the carriages, were so accustomed to trains arriving and
departing that it apparently occurred to none of them that the engineer
was human and subject to the same atmospheric conditions as themselves.
I placed the mouthpiece between his purple lips, and, holding my own
breath like a submerged man, succeeded in reviving him. He said that if
I gave him the machine he would take out the train as far as the steam
already in the boiler would carry it. I refused to do this, but stepped
on the engine with him, saying it would keep life in both of us until
we got out into better air. In a surly manner he agreed to this and
started the train, but he did not play fair. Each time he refused to