It was now, as they dove bodily into a great drift choking up an embankment cut, that they realized that they had reached a definite angle in their experience of the run, and were halted for good.
No. 999 barely pushed her nose far enough out of the enveloping drift, to enable Ralph by the aid of the glaring headlight to discern other drifts further ahead.
"We're stalled, that's dead sure," declared Fogg. "Signal the conductor and see what the programme is."
It was some time after the tooting signal that the conductor put in an appearance. He did not come along the side track. That was fairly impossible, for it would have been sheer burrow progress. He came over the top of the next car to the tender, a blind baggage, and as he climbed over the coal in the tender his lantern smashed and he presented a pale and anxious face to the view of the cab crew.
"What's the prospects?" he inquired in a discouraged tone.
"It looks like an all-night layover," reported Ralph.
"There's nothing ahead, of course," said the conductor calculatingly. "There's a freight due on the in track. Behind us a freight was to come,
