"I couldn't bribe the fireman," he said, "because yesterday I inadvertently called him a stoker, and he has not yet forgiven me."
There was a laugh at this; the party jubilantly mounted the Pullman cars, and the special pulled out.
It proved a very pleasant and speedy journey, and as the train approached its destination Edmund Trevelyan passed the word that all should assemble in the observation-car at the rear, as that would be uncoupled, and the rest of the train shot on ahead. When this was done, conductors outside each end of the observation-car locked the doors, and Edmund Trevelyan smilingly made a startling announcement.
"Gentlemen," he said, "a remark was made to me before we started to the effect that I might have bribed fireman and engineer. That charge was true, but not in the sense the accuser intended. It was my desire that this test should be one never forgotten by any of those present. I have bribed both engineer and fireman to jump off after having set their locomotive at its greatest speed. We are now running at something like sixty miles an hour toward five hundred tons of railway iron. By this time our engine-driver and fireman are twenty-five miles behind us, and the locomotive ahead is empty, dragging us through space at such speed as it has achieved, entirely uncontrolled except by Mr. Sarsfield-Mitcham's apparatus."
