"We'll go specially easy here," said the official who was directing operations. "Though one expects that the man is killed, and smothered by all this dirt, yet you never can say in an accident of this sort. I've known a life saved most miraculously."
The hook at the end of the huge chain run over the top of the derrick was attached to the forward bogie of the overturned car, then the whole thing was lifted. Underneath was found a mass of dirt and rock which the impetus of the car had tossed forward. At the back, just beneath the edge of the truck, where it had thrust its way a foot into the ground, one of the workers caught sight of an arm with the fingers of the hand protruding from the debris. "Hold hard!" he shouted. "He's here. Best wait till we've tried to pull him out. The car might swing on that chain and crush him."
They kept the end of the wrecked truck suspended while willing hands sought for our hero. A man crept in under the truck, swept the earth away, and passed the listless figure of the young car driver out into the open. Jim was at once placed on a stretcher, while the Commission surgeon bent over him, dropping a finger on his pulse. He found it beating, very slowly to be sure, but beating without doubt, while a deep bruise across the forehead suggested what had happened. A rapid inspection of his patient, in fact, convinced the surgeon that there was no serious damage.
"Badly stunned, I guess," he said. "I can't find that any bones are broken, and though I thought at first that his skull must be injured, everything points to my fears being groundless. Put him in the ambulance, boys, and let's get him back to hospital."
An hour later our hero was safely between the sheets, with a nurse superintending his comfort. By the time that Phineas arrived on the scene he was conscious, though hardly fit for an interview; but on the following morning he was almost himself, and chafed under the nurse's restraint till the surgeon gave him permission to get up.
"As if I was a baby," he growled. "I suppose I fell on my head, and that knocked me silly. But it's nothing; I haven't more than the smallest headache now."
"Just because you're lucky, young fellow," quizzed the surgeon. "Let me say this: the tumble you had was enough to knock you silly, and I dare say that if you hadn't had something particular to do you would have gone off at once. But your grit made you hold on to your senses. That car, when it overturned, as near as possible smashed your head into the earth beneath it. You'll never be nearer a call while you're working here on the canal. Low diet, sister, and see that he keeps quiet."