“Bring ’em along, then, and let’s get to work.”
To our infinite relief the four villains filed out of the cabin, and the sound of their retreating footsteps was quickly lost in the whistling of the wind. After lying quite still for a moment I ventured to move enough to enable me to peep through one of the chinks in the wall. In the dim light—for, though there was a full moon, the sky was obscured by a thin layer of cloud—I could see the men walking one behind the other down towards the bridge. As soon as they disappeared from sight I whispered to Percy to turn out, and the next moment we were through the doorway and hurrying off up-stream.
“Tom,” Percy hastily exclaimed, after we had gone a hundred yards, “we must climb over the hill and get back to the track below the bridge and signal that train.”
“Yes,” I responded. “But first we have to find a place where we can climb up this cliff; it is too steep here.”
We consumed ten or fifteen minutes of precious time searching for an available spot, but at last we found a place where the bluff had broken away, and clambering quickly to the top, we hurried over the hill and down to the railroad, where we set off down-wind as fast as we could walk—being afraid to run in the dark lest we should break our legs by tumbling through a cattle-guard.
We had gone about half a mile, perhaps, when, looking back, we saw, dimly outlined against the luminous grey sky, the figure of the watcher on the hill. Though it was unlikely that he should be able to see us, we were afraid to risk it, and we therefore stepped from the track and lay down on the lower side of the embankment, whence we could keep a lookout down the line, and also maintain a watch upon the watcher.
“How are we going to signal the train, Tom?” asked Percy. “We have no lantern, and we haven’t time to collect material to build a fire on the track; and if we did so that fellow back there would see it, of course, and the whole rascally gang would be after us directly. And besides that the train might be late and our fire might burn out before it got here.”
“The only way I see,” I replied, “is to use the newspaper that the ham is wrapped up in. We must wait till the train is pretty near and then light the paper, trusting to its being seen before it burns out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Percy responded, “but I think I know a better way still. I will crawl down the bank here and cut a willow stick; we will split the end of it and insert the newspaper, ham and all, into the cleft, and then we shall have a torch which will last five or ten minutes.”
In accordance with Percy’s idea we soon had our torch prepared, and again we lay still, waiting. Some forty slow minutes dragged along, when we thought we could detect a tremor in the rails close to our heads. We were right, for directly afterwards the headlight of the engine appeared coming round the bend. I glanced back at the watchman; he was still at his post, having not yet seen the light on account of the curve in the road. A moment later, however, the increase in the size of the headlight showed that the train had turned the corner, and at the same instant I saw the man on the hill turn and run. As he disappeared from view I called to Percy to light up, and Percy, who was holding six matches in readiness, struck them all at once, and sheltering the flame from the wind as best he could, applied it to the paper. The greasy material flared up in an instant, and seizing the stick I sprang into the middle of the track and waved the light to and fro in front of me.