Thompson had to put some gasoline in the car before he could follow, so Pep reached the depot five minutes ahead of the machine. Instead of finding the train puffing away on the tracks as he had expected, the rails were clear. His master had gone. He was too late. He sniffed frantically up and down the platform to find the scent but there was none that he could recognize. Then he remembered the track. The two shining sticks that the train always ran upon.
He knew which way his master had gone, the one way to New York. He looked up at the station platform and away into the darkness. Then Thompson and the motor whizzed up: That decided him. He turned his nose towards New York and galloped frantically down the track.
Meanwhile the doctor sat in the smoking car chewing savagely on the end of his cigar, and looking gloomily out of the window. His home and his wife had hitherto been all and all to him.
Now his country had called him. He found to his surprise that there had been all the time a deep sense of love of country lying dormant in his nature. A newsboy on the train was selling small silk flags. The doctor purchased one and placed it in his buttonhole. His fingers now fondled it lovingly as he mused.
All that he loved here in the homeland was dropping further and further behind. This new strange passion for country was taking him far from home, wife, and friends, to what hardships and struggles he knew not. It did not matter though as long as he came through safe and sound.
At this point in his reflections, a shiver ran through the train. At first it was only a tremor, but immediately it grew into a crashing, grating, grinding sound. The train buckled in the middle, raising three cars fairly from the track. Others swayed this way and that.
There was the sound of breaking car floors, of shattered glass, and grinding car-frames. Together with the more frightful sound of the ripping of rails and the breaking of ties, but shot through all these mighty sounds of destruction, was the frantic screams of women, and the hoarse cries of men, who fought and struggled as they felt themselves hurled to doom.
It was only a broken axle that had caused all this destruction of life and property. So the superintendent’s report said a few days later.
The car in which the doctor was riding fared better than many of the others and merely toppled on its side after being butted off the track.
The physician was thrown across the isle, but not injured. Almost before the rest of the passengers knew what had happened he was on his feet and breaking his way out through a window. Five minutes later, he was going from point to point attending the injured, organizing relief and giving what aid he could with the limited means at hand.