human
Our engineer never slowed up, and our floor was going into kindling-wood fast. It was as dark as pitch, and nobody said a word. Fred Reynolds and I--Reynolds was a clown acrobat--had lower berths right at the end, next to the negro porter, and I don't say we escaped because we were acrobats, but--well, this is what we did. Fred gave one mighty leap, just like going over elephants, and cleared the whole trail of wreckage that was pounding along behind the car and landed safe on the track. It was a crazy thing to do, in my opinion, but it worked. I made a spring for the chandelier, and hung there until the train stopped. And afterward I found my trousers back on the road-bed with the legs cut clean off, and I guess my own legs would have gone the same way if they'd been there. What did the porter do? Oh, he did nothing, and--and he was killed.