Five minutes later he felt able to undertake the remainder of the task before him, by no means an easy one, namely to clamber along the outside of the coach, and cross to the truck trailing behind the train. It was getting chilly on the step, and he felt that if he did not move soon he would perhaps become too cramped. Clambering to his feet, he gripped the rail overhead, which ran horizontally to the back of the coach, and felt his way along the footboard with his toes. Presently he discovered that, whereas the rail continued to the end, the boards did not. They were cut off abruptly.
"Which makes it a trifle more difficult," he thought. "I shall have to swing my way along."
But to cling to a rail and swing one's way along it when a train is tearing away at thirty-five miles an hour, and swaying horribly, is no easy matter; for the wind tears and grips at one dangerously. Jack found it required all his strength to maintain a grip, and presently drew his legs up and felt desperately for some foothold.
"I'm still a couple of yards from the end," he thought grimly, casting his eyes over his shoulder, "and I'm dead sure I can't hold on like this all the way. I must try—ah, here's something!"
His toes lit upon a beading of the carriage work, and the support he thus obtained helped him wonderfully. Then, in the gloom above, he discerned a second rail, and reaching up with one hand managed to grasp it and haul himself a little higher, with his toes still on the bead. And now his head was on a level with the windows of the coach.
"Three men," he said to himself, withdrawing his head, for a hasty glance told him that the coach was occupied. "No, four. Whew!"
A second glance told him that there was a fourth person; and once he had seen him our hero dropped down again, and gave vent to a low whistle. Surprises seemed to be ever in store for him. The fourth individual he had seen was huddled in a corner of the coach, and the glimpse Jack had caught of him showed that he was bound hand and foot.
"Gee! Now what on earth is the meaning of that?" he asked himself. "Three men sitting at the far end, with a lantern at their feet, and the fourth a prisoner!"
It was not the most comfortable place in the world in which to puzzle about such a knotty question, and, think as he might, our hero could come no nearer a solution. Obviously he must reach some point of safety and then cogitate.
"I'll get along this beading somehow," he thought, "and then take a look round. There's queer doings in that coach."