Halkett and Dick helped him, and almost before the tank was filled they had started on the back journey. Many precious minutes had been lost, but the engine had returned to the waiting train with a quarter of an hour to spare in which to reach Three Moose siding and get out of the way of the express.
"D'you reckon we can do it, Joe?" Silk asked with a quick glance at the engineer.
Halkett had abandoned his duty. He sat on a corner of the tool-box and was staring about him like a man in a fever, with a sort of wild gleam in his eyes, as if some mortal terror had taken hold of him and was tormenting him. He held a long-spouted oilcan in his hand, and the oil was dripping to his feet.
"Can we do it?" Silk repeated. And looking at Joe more attentively he began to realise that the man's strange agitation of mind was due to something quite apart from the danger of being run into by the express.
"We can't get to the switch on time," Joe roused himself to say in a voice that was hoarse and unnatural. "You c'n try as you like; but, clever as you are, you'll never get this yer engine to pass Three Moose Crossing. Thar's blood on the track, see? The place is haunted—haunted by the ghost of a dead man."
"He's sure mad, now," muttered Dick. "Say, Sergeant, you'd best leave him and take charge. We might git inter the siding if we start right now."
Sergeant Silk snatched the oilcan from Joe Halkett's grip and handed it to the fireman.
"Look here, Dick," he commanded, "take this can and run back to the tail of the train and grease the metals. Oil first one rail and then the other. D'you understand? It's our only chance. Let the oil run about a car's length on the top of each rail, and come back again quick as you can."
Before Dick returned, panting and perspiring, with the empty can, Silk was ready to start, with his hand on the throttle valve. He blew the whistle, and with a snort, a grunt, and a noisy rattle, the engine moved on, now wholly under the sergeant's control.