“What a narrow escape!” exclaimed Mrs. Cultus, “I felt as if well shaken, and was about to be taken. I hope to goodness they won’t do it again”—but they did.
They were now rounding a projecting knoll, before passing through a short cut; they then crept under a bridge which, curious to relate, they crossed over hardly a minute later. These engineering gymnastics were utterly preposterous to our explorers.
“Has the train lost its way?” laughed Adele. “Where are we? What next?”
“If I don’t fly off like a bird,” said Miss Winchester, “I expect to enter the bowels of the earth and be a gnome; that will surely be my next incarnation.”
“I prefer the bird,” remarked Adele.
“Which? parrot or peacock? India’s choice. Considering altitude and climate, I think a gnome will suit me. What will you be, Paul?”
“Oh, leave things as they are.”
“But you’ve got to be something if in India,” persisted Miss Winchester.
“Rats!” exclaimed Paul, “as lief as anything else—what nonsense you are talking!”
“There’s method in this railway madness,” suggested the civil engineer; and he showed them some rough sketches he had hurriedly made illustrating the series of loops and zigzags the line had followed between Tindharia and Gumti. “How is that for horseshoe curves, mule-shoes, and other adaptations to the requirements of the road—‘feats of engineering’ we call them.” The Englishman was trying to be facetious.