“I have heard of another road,” continued Conductor Tobin, “now being built somewhere in Europe, Austria I believe, over which they propose to run trains at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour.”
Here the conversation was interrupted by Snyder Appleby, who, in a frenzy of terror that he could no longer control, shouted “Stop him! Stop him! I order you to stop him at once!”
“All right, sir, I’ll try,” answered Conductor Tobin, with a scornful smile on his face. Just as he lifted his hand to the bell-cord there came a shriek from the locomotive whistle. It was instantly followed by such a powerful application of brakes that the car in which our friends were seated quivered in every joint and seemed as though about to be wrenched in pieces.
As the special finally came to a halt, and its occupants rushed out to discover the cause of its violent stoppage, they found the hissing monster, that had drawn them with such fearful velocity, standing trembling and panting within a few feet of one of the most complete and terrible wrecks any of them had ever seen.
[1] Pay-car.
[2] This time has actually been made by an American locomotive on an American railroad.—K. M.
CHAPTER XXXII.
SNATCHING VICTORY FROM DEFEAT.
The wreck by which the terrific speed of the special had been so suddenly checked was one of those that may happen at any time even on the best and most carefully-managed of railroads. The through freight, of which ex-Brakeman Joe was now conductor, had made its run safely and without incident to a point within twenty miles of New York. It was jogging along at its usual rate of speed when suddenly and without the slightest warning an axle under a “foreign” car, near the rear of the train, snapped in two. In an instant the car leaped from the rails and across the west-bound tracks, dragging the rear end of the freight, including the caboose, after it. Before the dazed train-hands could realize what was happening, the heavy locomotive of a west-bound freight that was passing the east-bound train at that moment crashed into the wreck. It struck a tank-car filled with oil. Like a flash of lightning a vast column of fire shot high in the air and billows of flame were roaring in every direction. These leaped from one to another of the derailed cars, until a dozen belonging to both trains, as well as the west-bound locomotive, were enveloped in their cruel embrace.