Then a foot dropped over from the roof and my companion climbed back.
“Better go yourself,” he said. “I carnt mike ’im understand. He threw lumps of coal at me from the perishin’ engine.”
So I climbed on to the roof of the swaying coach, got my balance and walked forward till a yard-wide jump to the next roof faced me in the darkness.
“Lord!” thought I, “if I didn’t know that other lad had been here, I shouldn’t care about it. However——” I took a strong leap and landed, slipping to my hands and knees.
There were six trucks between me and the engine and the jumps varied in width. I got there all right and screamed to the engine driver, “Incendie!—Incendie!”
He paused in the act of throwing coal at me and I screamed again. Apparently he caught it, for first peering back along all the train, he dived at a lever and the train screamed to a halt. I was mighty thankful. I hadn’t looked forward to going back the way I came and I climbed quickly down to the rails. A sort of guard with a lantern and an official appearance climbed out of a box of sorts and demanded to know what was the matter, and when I told him, called to me to follow and began doubling back along the track.
I followed. The train seemed about a mile long but eventually we reached a truck, full of men and a rosy glare, from which a column of smoke bellied out. The guard flashed his lantern in.
The cursed thing wasn’t on fire at all. The men were burning hay in a biscuit tin, singing merrily, just keeping themselves warm.
I thought of the agony of those jumps in the dark from roof to roof and laughed. But I got my own back. They couldn’t see us in the dark, so in short snappy sentences I ordered them to put the fire out immediately. And they thought I was an officer and did so.