t now. The driver and the stoker are being
strangled. I feel the speed of the train begin to slacken.

I understand. One of the ruffians knows how to work the train, and he
is slowing it to enable them to jump off and avoid the catastrophe.

I begin to master my torpor. Staggering like a drunken man, I crawl to
Kinko's case. There, in a few words, I tell him what has passed, and I
exclaim:

"We are lost!"

"No--perhaps" he replies.

Before I can move, Kinko is out of his box. He rushes towards the front
door; he climbs on to the tender.

"Come along! Come along!" he shouts.

I do not know how I have done it, but here I am at his side, on the
foot-plate, my feet in the blood of the driver and stoker, who have
been thrown off on to the line.

Faruskiar and his accomplices are no longer here.

But before they went one of them has taken off the brakes, jammed down
the regulator to full speed, thrown fresh coals into the fire-box, and
the train is running with frightful velocity.

In a few minutes we shall reach the Tjon viaduct.

Kinko, energetic and resolute, is as cool as a cucumber. But in vain he
tries to move the regulator, to shut off the steam, to put on the
brake. These valves and levers, what shall we do with them?

"I must tell Popof!" I shout.

"And what can he do? No; there is only one way--"

"And what is that?"

"Rouse up the fire," says Kinko, calmly; "shut down the safety valves,
and blow up the engine."

And was that the only way--a desperate way--of stopping the train
before it reached the viaduct?

Kinko scattered the coal on to the fire bars. He turned on the greatest
possible draught, the air roared across the furnace, the pressure goes
up, up, amid the heaving of the motion, the bellowings of the boiler,
the beating of the pistons. We are going a hundred kilometres an hour.

"Get back!" shouts Kinko above the roar. "Get back into the van."

"And you, Kinko?"

"Get back, I tell you."

I see him hang on to the valves, and put his whole weight on the levers.

"Go!" he shouts.

I am off over the tender. I am through the van. I awake Popof, shouting
with all my strength:

"Get back! Get back!"

A few passengers suddenly waking from sleep begin to run from the front
car.

Suddenly there is an explosion and a shock. The train at first jumps
back. Then it continues to move for about half a kilometre.

It stops.

Popof, the major, Caterna, most of the passengers are out on