For a moment in time the bridge buckled upwards under the last tank car. Then, like a slow motion close-up, it started to bend downwards in a vee, moving faster and faster as the law of gravity took over. The rear tank car dropped into the vee, pulling the flat cars down with it. The crash of the explosion was rolling away down the canyon and now the screech of tearing metal sounded. The rear flat cars fell off to the side and the passenger coach behind them twisted over and wedged itself crossways between the main concrete buttresses and the far bank. By a miracle of bad luck it did not go down with the other cars and even as I turned away the guards came tumbling out of windows and doors unhurt. I looked towards our end. Three tanks had gone down with the bridge and lay twisted among the steel girders in the foaming river. Of the other two, one hung crazily over the angle between the steel and the bank. I could not see the leading tank car but I learned later it had remained upright but derailed. The couplings had broken just ahead of it, leaving the engine, the first guard car and the two flat cars free. That engineer was a smart man. Realizing that they hadn't much chance pinned down in the depths of the cutting, he pulled the throttle wide open and went for the open country as fast as the train would accelerate. With the wheels screeching and sparking on the tortured rails the engine bellowed up the grade like a charging bull trying to escape from the stockyards. I didn't know all this. I could hear the roaring engine and the storm of firing that followed. It would be suicide to attack the tank cars in full view, I thought. Better first dispose of the three that lay in the bottom of the ravine. I nodded to Lim and we started down. It was slow work at the bottom. In places the river ran right to the edge of the cliff and we had to scramble around on the big boulders or climb up and down the rough rock face, but we made progress and eventually we stood under the shattered bridge. Down here the light was dimmer and the sound of water washing around the wreckage deadened the noise of the sporadic firing above. In mid-stream the rearmost tank car lay on its side, split open by the fall. The other two, though buckled, were intact. They had toppled off to the side of the bridge and now lay across the big rocks on our side of the river in the shape of a twisted Z. Lim laid down his gun and started to work. His lungs heaving in his poor sick chest, he scrambled over the rocks and then disappeared under the middle tank car. He came back up dripping wet and motioned for a demolition charge. I crawled to him and gave him one. Between gasps for breath and above the noise of the water and the echoing battle he shouted in my ear. "I'm going to blow this one from underneath, at the lowest point above the water, so all the stuff will drain out."