By Right of Sword

by Arthur W. Marchmont

I knew then it was a matter of minutes. My pulse began to quicken up slightly; and my scrutiny of the track and rails increased in intentness. But the minutes dragged on and the announced time came and passed. I knew of the Czar's passion for punctuality, and after this delay had lasted some time I began to think a genuine accident must have caused it. In this weary suspense, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, three quarters passed, and my watch shewed 3.30, and still not a sign of even the pilot engine was visible.

Then a tiny black speck in the far straight distance, topped by a small white steam cloud told me the pilot engine was coming at last; and in the swift glances spared from my scrutiny of the rails, I saw it grow larger and blacker as it covered the intervening space, until it thundered up, and crashed and lumbered by us and began to fade in the opposite direction disappearing round the slight curve which was between us and Vsatesk station.

What the interval would be between the pilot engine and the first train, and what that first train would be, I did not know. The intervals always differed; sometimes five minutes, sometimes ten, sometimes as much as twenty minutes were allowed to elapse. But the interval was nothing compared with the question—which train would follow. On that might turn the whole result of the affair.

All the men had now straightened up, and even the five on my right shewed signs of being interested. I saw them looking up with stealthy, longing, deadly fixedness for the coming of their prey.

But on the line itself there was no sign of change.

I had understood that at some point the rails would be shifted so as to throw the train off the line. But search as closely as I would, I could not detect the least sign of any preparation for this. The uncertainty which this circumstance caused added to my excitement and the suspense became doubly trying. It quickened up to a climax when I saw once again in the distance the growing black speck with the white crown, that told me the second train was at hand.

I kept my eyes glued to the rails and my ears strained to catch the first notification either by sight or sound that the trap had been laid. Without such a sign, I dared not do anything.

Yet nothing happened; and the black speck in the distance developed into a distinct shape, and increased quickly in size, and a slight hum came vibrating along the rails. The hum grew into the sound of muffled drums; then swelled to a heavy threatening rumble; and rapidly climaxed to a crashing, rattling, reverberating roar, as the clattering clanging jolting baggage train lurched heavily by, and roared away southward.

It passed safely every point on the line; and the old question which would be next recurred with greater strain than before, and drummed itself in on my brain like a sharp throbbing shoot of pain.

When for the third time the little warning speck in the distance told me that either the Czar or his suite must now be coming, my excitement waxed well nigh out of control; my hand stole on to the hilt of my sword and loosened it in the scabbard, my fingers played on the stock of my revolver, and my eyes never for an instant left the rails, but ran up and down them with swift eager searching glances, hungry for a sign.