“We can’t do it!” Philip gasped out in consternation, with a vain attempt to draw up Gerald after him with one disengaged hand. Down they came on the sand together. The whistle uttered its warning again. They heard distant shouts as of belated passengers. They called for help, but the restaurant people were in front of their establishment. After a moment more the hum of the departing train greeted their ears.
“O, Gerald, Gerald, here’s a ladder, all the time!” called Philip, pulling it down from its hook, over their heads in the deep shadow.
To dash back to the long piazza and so around to the front of the house was a half moment’s flight. But they gained the place which they had quitted to gaze open-mouthed on an empty track and at puffs of smoke beyond the cut. That train was gone indeed, Mr. Hilliard aboard of it.
Two very comfortable-looking and composed people, that could only be Mr. and Mrs. Lafayette Fox, were standing in sight. The stout proprietor of the railway restaurant heard the story of their predicament.
“Well, ye’ll have to stay here just two hours and a half,” said Mr. Fox. “There aint a train till then. Too bad! Ye’d better telegraph to your friend that’s gone on ahead of you, so as he’ll know whether to wait for you at the Jersey City depot or in the New York one or not. I should think he’d look for a message one place or t’other when he gets in.”
“Yes, that’s quite likely,” replied Philip; “and he mustn’t think of waiting there. We’ll go straight to his rooms when we reach town, if ever we do.”
He sent his dispatches to the two waiting-rooms. He had better send another one still, he thought; so, not knowing the address of the hospitable cousin who was to take Mr. Hilliard and themselves under his roof, he wired a message to Mr. Hilliard’s own apartment, where they had expected to go. Somebody would send it over. “Accidentally detained from getting aboard again; please leave new address at old one, or at place where this is received. Will find you as soon as possible.” So ran the dispatch.
But scarcely had they sent these three communications, in the hope of saving their kind host perplexity and fatigue on account of the odd mishap, than Mrs. Lafayette Fox came running up to Philip, breathless. Luck was favoring them, surely. There was a fast freight-train rumbling into the little depot. A cousin of hers, Leander Jenks, was its conductor; and, railroad rules or no rules, Leander Jenks should take the pair of them aboard, and so get them to New York, not so much later than if they had not pursued their trip by way of the cellar. In came the fast freight. In a twinkling Jenks had consented, and, before they fairly realized it, the boys were ejaculating their thanks and being introduced to Leander and hustled aboard a red car, which speedily began pounding and jolting its brisk way at the end of a very long train, but at an excellent rate of speed, toward New York. They were well out of their plight.
“Yes,” said Philip; “and even if we should be late in reaching the city, or fail to make our connection with Mr. Hilliard, why, we’ll just go to the Windsor for the night and straighten it all out with him the next morning.”