The train which should have left at six o'clock was delayed. It was already dark when they entrained the soldiers into cattle-trucks like sheep. Planks had simply been nailed across the vehicles in form of benches, and the men were packed there by squads, cramming the trucks beyond measure; so that while some were seated one upon another a few stood up, so jammed together that they could not move a limb. On reaching Paris another train was in readiness to take them to the Rhine. They were already weighed down with fatigue in the confusion of departure. But as brandy had been distributed among them, and many had visited drinking-places in the vicinity of the station, they were full of heated and brutal gaiety, very red in the face, and with eyes starting from their heads. As soon as the train moved out of the station, they began to sing. Jacques immediately gazed at the sky, where storm-clouds hid the stars. The night would be very dark, not a breath of wind stirred the burning air, and the wind of the advance, generally so fresh, proved tepid. In the sombre outlook ahead, appeared no other lights than the bright sparks of the signals. He increased the pressure to ascend the long slope from Harfleur to Saint Romain. In spite of the study he had made of the engine No. 608 for some weeks, he had not yet got it perfectly in hand. It was too new, and its caprice, its errors of youth astonished him. On that night the locomotive proved particularly restive, whimsical, ready to fly away if only a few more pieces of coal than necessary, were placed on the bars. And so, with his hand on the reversing-wheel, he watched the fire, becoming more and more anxious at the behaviour of his fireman. The small lamp, lighting the water-level in the gauge-glass, left the foot-plate in a penumbra, which the red-hot door of the fire-box rendered violescent. He distinguished Pecqueux indistinctly, but on two occasions he had felt a sensation in the legs like the graze of fingers being exercised to grip him there. Doubtless this was nothing more than the clumsiness of a drunkard, for above the riot of the train he could hear Pecqueux sneering very loudly, breaking his coal with exaggerated blows of the hammer, and knocking with his shovel. Each minute he opened the door of the fire-box, flinging fuel on the bars in unreasonable quantities. "Enough!" shouted Jacques. The other, pretending not to understand, continued throwing in shovel upon shovel of coal; and as the driver grasped him by the arm, he turned round threateningly, having at last brought on the quarrel he had been seeking, in the increasing fury of his drunkenness. "If you touch me I shall strike!" yelled Pecqueux. "It amuses me to go quick!"