Tattered, torn and in unspeakable agony I picked myself up and found my
steering-gear so damaged that I could only move sideways, crab-fashion,
and in this manner I crawled on to the platform just as a train was
beginning its exit.
I make a leap for it. The gates crash to! Am I inside them or out?
Neither. I am pinned there with the first half of my body struggling
inside the car while the second half protrudes over the fast-receding
platform.
I remember how in my agony it flashed across my mind that I would never
again slay a wasp with my fork.
I must have been pulled into the car just in time to stop the tunnel
(which is a dreadfully close fit) from bisecting me, for the next thing
I remember was being dropped into a corner seat and severely admonished
by the guard for getting into the train whilst it was in motion.
I was now a quivering and shapeless mass; nobody pitied me, nobody
helped me, so loathsome a spectacle did I present.
Of course the train passed my station, and at the next I was thrown out
like a mail-bag, to be trodden on by massed formations of travellers
fighting to enter and leave the car by the same door at the same time.
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