We could see that it was running backward, and that a number of men were crowded on it. Almost at the same moment its machinery was reversed and ours turned forward. As we left them at lightning speed we could just see that their velocity was well checked before they touched our abandoned car. But this was not yet sufficient. As we came to the next slight up-grade the same manoeuvre was repeated, and our second car flung back at the enemy in like manner. The time lost in doing this brought them again near us, and we saw that they were pushing our first car before them. But how had they passed the broken rail? For years I could get no satisfactory information on this subject. Some Confederate accounts spoke of a rail being taken up behind and laid down before the engine. But the time was too short to permit such an action. That a stop could be made, a rail taken up, spiked down again, and our engine, running faster than the wind, overtaken,--all of this well inside of five minutes,--was incredible. Very probably this course was adopted in the case of the next train which was pursuing not far behind. Other Confederate accounts say nothing about this rail, while a few assert that it was not broken at all, but only loosened and left in its place. But having personally helped in the desperate pull, having fallen down the bank with the party, and carried one end of the rail to put on our car, besides having my left hand long suffer from being clasped under the hand of William Campbell, the strongest man of our party, I naturally cannot accept this explanation. Conductor Fuller gave another solution of the mystery scarcely less strange, which I repeat as he gave it to me. He said that when he saw our engine start on from this point he could see no obstruction, and allowed the train to continue at high speed. A moment after he noticed a short blank in one of the rails. A terrible fear swept over him, for it was now too late to stop. But quick as a lightning-flash he noticed another fact,--that the place of the missing rail was on the _inside_ of a sharp curve. He explained to me that a train at a very high rate of speed throws the most of its weight on the outside rail of a curve, which is always made a little higher than the other. Had an outside rail been broken the destruction of their train would have been inevitable, but the break was on the inside. With that rapid decision which the better class of railroad men learn to exercise, he signalled to the engineer, "Faster; faster yet!" There was a sharp jolt, and the locomotive and the cars attached were on the other side of the obstruction with their speed not even abated. The next train which followed was the passenger train that we had met at Calhoun, which had also been turned back after us. This train had track-layers and instruments on board, and did very quickly repair the damage; but if Fuller had waited even that long the bridge over the Oostenaula would