Of his two companions, Cain continued for more than twenty years as an engineer on the same road, while Murphy built up a prosperous business as a lumberman in Atlanta. CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT IN THE WOODS. Many persons, on hearing an account of this unparalleled chase, have suggested one expedient by which they imagine the fugitive Federals might have destroyed their enemy and accomplished their own purpose. "Why did you not," they say, "reverse your own engine and then jump from it, thus allowing it to knock the pursuing train from the track?" There were good reasons against that course. Such critics might as well ask a man who has ascended half-way up out of a well in a bucket why he does not cut the rope over his head for the sake of crushing somebody at the bottom of the well. That engine was the basis of all our hopes, and we could not think of abandoning it until the direst extremity. At the last moment, however, this attempt to reverse the engine for the purpose of securing a collision was made. This final effort was unavailing. The steam power was so nearly exhausted that the locomotive moved backward very slowly, and accomplished nothing beyond delaying the pursuit on foot for a very few moments. The pursuing train had no difficulty in also reversing and running back a little way until the captured engine came to a dead standstill. Indeed, the hard service of the engine had very nearly destroyed it, even before we thus flung it back at the enemy. A Confederate account says, "Their rapid running and inattention to their engine had melted all the brass from their journals." Wilson is still more graphic,-- "I could liken her condition to nothing else than the last struggles of a faithful horse, whose heartless master has driven and lashed him until he is gasping for breath, and literally dying in the harness. The powerful machine had carried us safely for more than a hundred miles, some of the time at a rate of speed appalling to contemplate, but she was becoming helpless and useless in our service. She was shaken loose in every joint, at least she seemed so; the brass on her journals and boxes was melted by the heat; her great steel tires were almost red-hot, while she smoked and sizzled at every joint. Our race was almost run."