"Say, kid, I forgot to tell you"—it was Jim alongside again—"look out and don't get pinched in the air-brake rods; they're bad. When the train's stopping, keep low and you'll be all right. I'm on the next car behind."
The train was now gathering headway, and John wondered how Jimmy would reach the wheel trucks between the now fast revolving wheels. A peculiar sensation came over the boy—half fear, half exhilaration. The whirring wheels clacked and thumped the rail joints, the ties flew underneath dizzily, the dust rose like a fog, and the wind of the train rattled the small stones of the roadbed together; the heavy car swayed above him dangerously near, and John, half choked and wholly terrified, wondered if he would come out of this irresistible whirlwind of a thing alive. All he could do was to grip the rods at his head and hang on.
CHAPTER XII.
A CHANGE OF SCENE.
For a time John could do nothing but hang on like grim death. He was half unconscious; the noise was so great, the dust so thick, and the motion so altogether terrifying that he was nearly stupefied. After a while, however, he noticed that the dreadful racket did not increase, that the clicking of the wheels over the rail joints had become regular, and that all the sounds had a sort of humming rhythm. His nerves quieted down somewhat, and he realized that he was still alive. His grasp on the braking rods overhead relaxed slightly, and he began to look around him—as much as the dust would allow. The train was moving at good speed. The ties below seemed first to rush at the boy threateningly, and then in a twinkling disappeared behind; the telegraph poles along the track had the same menacing attitude and seemed bent on his destruction; objects further off went by more leisurely. It looked as if the whole earth, and everything on it, was trying to run away from the standing train.
John soon found that it made him dizzy to watch the earth slip away from under him, so he turned his eyes to his surroundings. The wheels moved so swiftly that they would have seemed to be standing still were it not for the side motion, alternately checked by the flanges; a spot of mud on the rapidly turning axle looked like a white ring. Though this mode of travelling was dangerous, dirty, and unpleasant in many ways, John decided, in the recollection of his fatigue the day before, it was at least better than walking.
In half an hour the wheels thudded heavily over a switch joint, the speed of the train slackened, and the cylinder of the air brake under the centre of the car groaned a warning. John remembered his instructions and bent low to avoid the big iron lever. He watched it swing slowly toward him—nearer, nearer; the rod attached to it tightened until its vibrations sung in his ear. The train slowed up and then stopped with a jolt. "Phew! that was close," he murmured to himself. He did not dare to get out of his cramped position for fear he would be run over. His eyes, nose, and mouth were filled with dust, his back ached from his stooping posture, and the smell of grease and foul air escaping from the released brake was overpowering.