Joe, as well as the others in his sleeping car, was suddenly awakened by a crash. The train swayed from side to side and rolled along unevenly with many a lurch and bump.
"We're off the track!" cried Joe, as he rolled from his berth. And the memory of the scrawled warning came vividly to him.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STRIKE
The circus train bumped along for a few hundred feet, the engine meanwhile madly whistling, the wheels rattling over the wooden sleepers, and inside the various cars, where the performers had been suddenly awakened from their sleep, pandemonium reigned.
"What's the matter?" called Benny Turton from his berth near Joe's.
"Off the track—that's all," was the answer, given in a reassuring voice. For Joe had, somehow or other, grasped the fact there was no great danger unless they ran into something, and this, as yet, had not happened.
The train was off the track (or at least some of the coaches were) but it was quickly slowing down, and Joe, by a quick glance at his watch, made a mental calculation of their whereabouts.
For several miles in the vicinity where the accident had occurred was a long, and comparatively straight stretch of track, with no bridges and no gullies on either side. A train running off the track, even if going at fairly fast speed, would hardly topple over.