Bart knew every yard of that track, every pitch and curve, from the engine-house at the summit to the Marshfield turntable; and he realized that this was the most critical minute in all his years of railroading. Two courses were open to him—he might stick to the board, or he might roll off. Which was the less dangerous? If he rolled off at that speed, the best he could hope for would be a fearful bruising, broken bones and insensibility. It would be hours before rescuers could find him; and hours in that storm meant death. If he stayed on, he took the chance of being hurled from the rail at some curve; besides, what would happen when he reached the bottom, if he ever did reach it? He decided to stay on. The slide-board took the curves at express speed. Time and again Bart thought it was flying off. He wondered to find himself still sitting hunched on the spruce, when Waumbek Tank slipped by. He knew it had passed, although he did not see it. But little more than a mile due west, and almost thirteen hundred feet lower, lay the terminus. Was this to be his last ride on the line? In a couple of minutes at the most the thing would be decided. Bart manned himself for the finish. On he shot, straining at the bars, head down through the pitch darkness. He was dashing against a forty-mile gale at an equal speed; that was equivalent to standing still in a hurricane blowing eighty miles. It shrieked round him with indescribable fury, striving to hurl him backward from his seat. His cap was torn away, and the sleet pattered like a sand-blast on his bare skull. Cold Spring Tank flitted past, and the last steep pitch was near, seventeen hundred to the mile. In a moment Bart was rushing madly down the descent. His head swam with the hideous speed. His board vibrated and trembled as it hurtled along the track. All seemed unreal, uncanny. But although dazed and buffeted, he never for an instant loosed his grip of the bars. A “green” man might have lost his head, and that could have had but one result. Almost sooner than he could think, he was at the bottom of the pitch, darting over the Ammonoosuc bridge. Only a few hundred feet more. The track, he knew, was clear to its end, for cars and engines were housed for the night. Now for one last, long, hard pull! Deaf, blind, numb, exhausted, bent almost double, he drained his strength to the dregs for a clutch on the handles; then he lifted, as if he would tear the flange from the centerpiece. There was a terrific shrieking as the iron surfaces ground together. Fire followed each brake. A building rushed by on the right—the carpenter-shop. Bart did not actually see it, but he knew it was gone. Then came the car-barn, the turntable, the engine-house and repair-shop, and the long wood-shed. Less than thirty yards more! His speed was slackening on the level grade, but it was still tremendous.