Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the fugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not one second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside or broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then in the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing certain is that there was no delay. Very likely the rail broke. Rails of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the chief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and two streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.
On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the rolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand ready to cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrews stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few minutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minutes were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them. It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge before it, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were detached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.
"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching sooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegram ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star. Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."
The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.
"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meet again."
Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold, where he and they were hung. The other six of the fourteen who were captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the Union lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?
[CHAPTER VI]
Tom up a Tree—Did the Confederate Officer See Him?—A Fugitive Slave Guides Him—Buying a Boat in the Dark—Adrift in the Enemy's Country.