"Thunder!" he shouted, "what have we struck?"
Ralph got down to find out. The conductor came running up while he was making his inspection. They discovered a queer situation.
Chained to the track were three ties. They did not look as if they had been placed there for a bumper. But Ralph did not waste time theorizing. With what tools the locomotive afforded they set to work and soon removed the obstruction.
Just an hour later they cleared the old rickety cut off. It was dark now. They ran down the main line ten miles, and at The Barrens took coal and water, while Ralph was busy with the station operator in communication with headquarters.
He calculated closely as they started on the long home run. It would take some steam and the best of luck to reach the yards at Stanley Junction by eleven p. m.
At nine o'clock they passed Revere without stopping. At ten they switched at Wayne, forty-five miles from terminus.
It lacked just ten minutes of eleven o'clock when the special came in sight of the lights of the Junction. To follow the main and risk a stoppage at the limits would never allow of an arrival on the time set.
"I have got an idea," said Ralph, slowing up as they neared the first siding of the yards in-tracks.
"Go to it, then--anything to pull through on time," responded the fireman with vigor.
Ralph jumped down from the cab, unset a switch, glanced ahead down the open track, and then glanced at his watch.
"Eight minutes," he said, quite excited now. "Crowd on every pound of steam you can. We may make it by a bare scratch."
Ahead was the outline of the fence of the yards. The gate to its west special track outlet was shut after working hours, Ralph knew well, but it was a flimsy affair used less for protection than to exclude intruders.
"Four minutes," he spoke, and the flying locomotive was rushing ahead with a grinding roar.
They took the gate, sending its frail boards flying up into the air in a cascade of riven splinters.
"Arrived!" shouted the fireman triumphantly.
Ralph started to let down speed. Just then something happened. The brake beam of the truck under the tender dropped, causing the wheels to leave the rails.
The locomotive played a veritable "crack the whip" with the cars behind, became separated from the train, and traveled fully four hundred feet before she stopped.