My legs shook under me as I thought this, and the light in the carriage seemed to be dancing up and down, as I put my right arm out of the window and hung to the side to keep myself up.
All this was a matter of moments, and it seemed to be directly after my fellow-passenger had spoken first that he roared out, “Do you hear, sir? Come here!”
I did not move, and he made a dash at me, but, as he did, my right hand rested on the fastening of the door outside, turned the handle, and clinging to it, I swung out into the rushing wind, turning half round as the door banged heavily back, when, by an instinctive motion, my left hand caught at anything to save me from falling, grasped the bar that ran along between door and door, and the next moment, how I know not, I was clinging to this bar with my feet on the foot-board, and my eyes strained back at the open door, out of which my fellow-passenger leaned.
“You young idiot, come back!” he roared; but the effect of his words was to make me shrink farther away, catching at the handle of the next door, and then reaching on to the next bar, so that I was now several feet away.
The wind seemed as if it would tear me from the foot-board, and I was obliged to keep my face away to breathe; but I clung to the bar tightly, and watched the fierce face that was thrust out of the door I had left.
“Am I to come after you?” he roared. “Come back!”
My answer was to creep past another door, to find to my horror that this was the last, and that there was a great gap between me and the next carriage.
What was I to do? Jump, with the train dashing along at such a rate that it seemed as if I must be shaken down or torn off by the wind.
I stared back horror-stricken and then uttered a cry of fear, as the window I had just passed was thrown open and a man leaned out.
“I’ll swear I heard someone shout,” he said to a travelling companion, and he looked back along the train. “Yes,” he continued, “there’s someone three compartments back looking out. Oh, he’s gone in now. Wonder what it was!”