"What prudent!" cried Colonel Proctor, jumping at this word, heard by chance. "At full speed, you have been told! Don't you understand? At full speed!"
"I know—I understand," repeated Passepartout, whom no one would allow to finish his phrase; "but it would be, if not more prudent, since the word offends you, at least more natural———"
"Who? What? How? What is the matter with this fellow?" was heard from all directions.
The poor fellow did not know whom to address.
"Are you afraid?" Colonel Proctor asked him.
"I, afraid?" cried Passepartout. "Well, so be it! I will show these people that a Frenchman can be as American as they!"
"All aboard! All aboard!" cried the conductor.
"Yes, all aboard," repeated Passepartout; "all aboard! and right away! But they can't prevent me from thinking that it would have been more natural for us to have gone over the bridge afoot, and then brought the train afterwards!"
But no one heard this sage reflection, and no one would have acknowledged its justness.
The passengers took their seats again in the cars. Passepartout resumed his, without saying anything of what had occurred. The players were entirely absorbed in their game.
The locomotive whistled vigorously. The engineer reversed his engine, and backed for about a mile—returned like a jumper who is going to take a leap. Then, at a second whistle, they commenced to move forwards, the speed increased; it soon became frightful; but a single puffing was heard from the locomotive; the pistons worked twenty strokes to the second; the axles smoked in the journals. They felt, so to speak, that the entire train, moving at the rate of one hundred miles to the hour, did not bear upon the rails. The speed destroyed the weight.
And they passed! And it was like a flash of lightning. They saw nothing of the bridge. The train leaped, it might be said, from one bank to the other, and the engineer could not stop his train for five miles beyond the station.
But the train had scarcely crossed the river than the bridge, already about to fall, went down with a crash into the rapids of Medicine Bow.
