caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack
of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar
that hissed most curiously--and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at
the joints and wobbled under him.

Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame
that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the
bend and plunged for him--and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast.
There was no room to let it pass--on one side was just nothing, barring
a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back
from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting
flame that even in its passing would burn him to a crisp. And with one
wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and,
pushing first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began
to pump.

There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy
Durgan's siesta--only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and
Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started
the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke
behind him was travelling two feet to his one.

Sammy Durgan pumped--for his life. He got up a little better
speed--but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went,
the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle,
madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms,
shoulders and head--his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood
straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk.

Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a
drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels
hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then
found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and
faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues,
vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a
mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum
and mass against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle--and
the race was not to Sammy Durgan.

He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began
to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back.

"'Tis my finish," wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting
lungs and chattering teeth. "'Tis a dead man, I am--oh, Holy
Mith