"So I am," laughed Rob, munching a Chinese sweetcake as he spoke. "But how about the message to Pao-Ting?"
"Oh, he sent it off all right. That is, I suppose he did. Anyhow, he seemed a good deal impressed by the name I signed to it."
"What name was it?"
"Yu-Hsien."
"What! The governor of Shan-Si! The big man of all the Boxers! You didn't have the cheek!"
"I did, though," declared Jo, stoutly; "and if it don't get us what we want at Pao-Ting, there isn't another name in all China that would."
They were barely out of sight of the station before they came to a bridge across a small river. Here, as the telegraph-line was strung on it within easy reach, the locomotive was brought to a stand-still, while Rob again tried his hand at wire-cutting. Jo leaned from the cab to watch him, thus relaxing for a minute his close watch of their useful prisoner.
As Rob came back, calling out: "Let her go again, I'm aboard," Jo turned to give the necessary order, only to discover to his consternation that the engine-driver was nowhere in sight. In vain did they search through the cab and its tender, in the water-tanks, and even under the coal. In vain did they look up and down the track, at the bridge on both sides, even staring down into the water twenty feet below them. The man had disappeared, so far as they could discover, as absolutely as though the ground had opened and swallowed him.
"Well," remarked Rob, in a melancholy tone, "that beats anything I ever experienced. We certainly have got the old wagon to ourselves now, and the question is, what shall we do with it?"
"I say run it," replied Jo. "I've watched him until I know how to start and stop, and how to go slow or fast. I'll do that part if you will keep up the fire, and I don't believe there is anything else to be looked out for."