"You have enough to get us to Kingston," answered Fuller. "Get aboard there!"
The Yonah slipped from the turn-table, swung into the main track and started in pursuit. The throttle was open wide.
Fuller and Murphy exchanged glances; the same thought had crossed their minds. If the Yanks had torn up the track ahead of them, the Yonah would be wrecked, and, traveling at such speed, a wreck meant death for them all. The Yonah would hurl itself from the track, and end in a steaming, smoldering ruin. Yet the two men kept their thoughts to themselves and said nothing. Caution at that moment might mean that they would lose the race. It was better to lose in a wreck than to lose by delaying. The Yonah—it was a light engine—fairly danced upon the rails.
Passengers along the way who had been disappointed once by a train which did not stop for them, gazed in amazement as the engine flashed past.
Fuller, sitting behind the engineer, leaned out of the window and peered ahead, watching the track anxiously. Murphy, with the two men who had come with them, stood by the brakes, ready to apply them when Fuller gave the signal. They were two miles from Kingston when Fuller lurched across the cab and pulled the whistle cord. It was that long shrieking blast which Andrews' men had heard as the General swung around the bend of the side-track into the main line.
Andrews, as Kingston dropped behind them, stood leaning against the side of the cab, his chin in his hand, and his eyes closed. Tom, stripped to his waist, was struggling back and forth between the tender and the engine with logs of wood which he shoved into the fire-box. The General was belching great clouds of black smoke; red sparks flashed back over the train like a plume waving in the breeze.
"That's enough," yelled Knight. "We've got a full head of steam now. Push her, Brown, push her!"
And still Andrews stood there, with his eyes closed, thinking. Tom clambered to the fireman's seat.
"Stop here!" called Andrews suddenly.
Tom sprang for the brake.