“If I can make it—if I can only make it!” he voiced, and the aspiration was a kind of a wail.
The young engineer of No. 999 had been the former leader of all boyish sports and exercises in Stanley Junction. Posed as he had posed many times in the past when he was firing at a mark, with all his skill, he calculated aim, distance and fling. The bull’s eye target was the lantern pendant from the arm of the semaphore.
One—failed! the missile missed its intended mark.
Two—a ringing yell of delight, of hope, of triumph rang from the lips of the young engineer. The skillfully-aimed projectile had struck the glass of the signal, shivering it to atoms. The wind and rain did the rest. Out went the light.
A sharp whistle from No. 38, the hiss of the air brakes, and panting and exhausted, the young engineer of No. 999 watched the Night Express 155 whiz by on a lessening run and come to a stop two hundred yards away.
Ralph dashed after the train, now halted beyond the trestle. He did not heed the shout of the brakeman already out on the tracks, but got up to the locomotive just as the conductor, lantern in hand, reached it.
“Hello!” shot out the engineer of No. 38, staring at the figure outlined within the halo of the conductor’s light—“Fairbanks!”
“Why, so it is!” exclaimed the conductor, and it was easy for him to discern from Ralph’s sudden appearance and breathless manner that he had some interest, if not an active part, in the mysterious disappearance of the semaphore signal. “What is it, Fairbanks?”
Very hurriedly Ralph explained. The engineer of No. 38 uttered a low whistle, meantime regarding the active young railroader, whom he well knew, with a glance of decided admiration. Then as hurried were the further movements of the conductor.
Within a very few minutes a brakeman was speeding back to Widener to inform the man on duty there of the condition of affairs. He returned to report the situation in safe official control all up and down the line. In the meantime No 38. had moved up to the scene of the wreck. 156 This was done at the suggestion of Ralph, who did not know how the passengers in the special coach might have fared. Arrived at the scene, however, it was soon learned that two men only had been thrown from their beds and slightly bruised. The rest of the passengers were only shaken up.