The car was backing swiftly up the grade with the engine behind serving as a “pusher.” At first the fiercely-driven snow-whirl made Virginia gasp. Then the speed slackened and she could breathe and see.
The shrilling wheels were tracking around a curve into a scanty widening of the canyon. To the left, on the rails of the new line, the big octopod was heaving and grunting in the midst of an army of workmen swarming thick upon the overturned guard engine.
“Goodness! it's like a battle!” she shuddered. As she spoke the Rosemary stopped with a jerk and McGrath's fireman darted past to set the spur-track switch.
The points were snow-clogged, and the fireman wrestled with the lever, saying words. The delay was measurable in heart-beats, but it sufficed. The big octopod coughed thrice like a mighty giant in a consumption; the clustering workmen scattered like chaff to a ringing shout of “Stand clear!” and the obstructing mass of iron and steel rolled, wallowing and hissing, into the stream.
“Rails to the front! Hammermen!” yelled Winton; and the scattered force rallied instantly.
But now the wrestling fireman had thrown the switch, and at the Rajah's command the Rosemary shot out on the spur to be thrust with locked brakes fairly into the breach left defenseless by the ditched engine. With a mob-roar of wrath the infuriated track-layers made a rush for the new obstruction. But Winton was before them.
“Hold on!” he shouted, bearing them back with outflung arms. “Hold on, men, for God's sake! There are women in that car!”
The wrathful wave broke and eddied murmurous while a square-shouldered old man with fierce eyes and huge white mustaches, and with an extinct cigar between his teeth, clambered down from the Rosemary's engine to say:
“Hah! a ratheh close connection, eh, Misteh Winton? Faveh me with a match, if you please, seh. May I assume that you won't tumble my private car into the ditch?”
Winton was white-hot, but he found a light for the Rajah's cigar, easing his mind only as he might with Virginia looking on.