With the utmost care he wriggled into a position from where, at the first favourable opportunity, he would be able to slip down to the ground and scuttle back into the wooded slopes again, and waited. The minutes ticked by--minutes which began to total into respectable fractions of an hour--but still many of the Terror Boys kept up their unceasing tour. Round and round they marched till the blood glowed as redly as possible in their wan and dissolute faces, and in the meantime the White Knight became more and more chilled. He longed to move, to circulate his freezing blood--to do, in fact, what his enemies themselves were doing--but it seemed that Fate, having once permitted him to board the train, was set on keeping him there, irresponsibly transferring her favour to the other side; coquettishly flirting, now with him, the next moment conspiring against him. Once there was a lull. For some reason the Communists suddenly assembled together in argument, and as the group swelled, so one side of the train was left to itself. Wenzel tensed himself for his escape, but even as he drew himself to the edge, preparatory to clambering down to the buffers, the engine-driver alighted and walked along, swinging his arms as he moved. By the time the man was warm again the promenade had recommenced and Wenzel's opportunity had gone. Later the Terrorists began to climb back into the train, and Wenzel's eyes glistened with anticipation; but his hopes were very quickly shattered. Szamuelly, with the cunning of a serpent, set two guards, one on each side of the train. So the night passed. Despite everything, his watch and his discomfort, Wenzel fell into a fitful slumber--not sleep in the actual sense of the word, but a restless jerky doze from which he forced himself to awake every few minutes until his head ached with the effort. Without warning there was a grinding jerk. Wenzel opened his eyes with a start. The train was moving; with a sense of dismay he realized that eventually he must have given way and actually slept. Now it was too late to escape--he was being carried with the Death Train to Bira. The engine gathered speed and, with its added velocity, rocked unsteadily from side to side. Then for Wenzel began a nightmare of inconceivable hideousness. He gripped hold of something--he never knew what--and held to it with a tenacity which presently became subconscious, but even so his body was turned, rolled, and banged on the sloping roof. The billowing clouds of smoke blew into his face until his throat and nose were filled with cinders, and he felt sick from the taste of the acrid fumes. Somehow he repressed the burst of coughing which threatened to seize him every second, but to do so he had to fill his body with deep breaths which served to suck in still further supplies of the smoke.