"You have enough to get us to Kingston," answered Fuller. "Get aboard there!" The _Yonah_ slipped from the turn-table, swung into the main track and started in pursuit. The throttle was open wide. Fuller and Murphy exchanged glances; the same thought had crossed their minds. If the Yanks had torn up the track ahead of them, the _Yonah_ would be wrecked, and, traveling at such speed, a wreck meant death for them all. The _Yonah_ would hurl itself from the track, and end in a steaming, smoldering ruin. Yet the two men kept their thoughts to themselves and said nothing. Caution at that moment might mean that they would lose the race. It was better to lose in a wreck than to lose by delaying. The _Yonah_--it was a light engine--fairly danced upon the rails. Passengers along the way who had been disappointed once by a train which did not stop for them, gazed in amazement as the engine flashed past. Fuller, sitting behind the engineer, leaned out of the window and peered ahead, watching the track anxiously. Murphy, with the two men who had come with them, stood by the brakes, ready to apply them when Fuller gave the signal. They were two miles from Kingston when Fuller lurched across the cab and pulled the whistle cord. It was that long shrieking blast which Andrews' men had heard as the _General_ swung around the bend of the side-track into the main line. Andrews, as Kingston dropped behind them, stood leaning against the side of the cab, his chin in his hand, and his eyes closed. Tom, stripped to his waist, was struggling back and forth between the tender and the engine with logs of wood which he shoved into the fire-box. The _General_ was belching great clouds of black smoke; red sparks flashed back over the train like a plume waving in the breeze. "That's enough," yelled Knight. "We've got a full head of steam now. Push her, Brown, push her!" And still Andrews stood there, with his eyes closed, thinking. Tom clambered to the fireman's seat. "Stop here!" called Andrews suddenly. Tom sprang for the brake. "Rip down those wires," Andrews continued. "Two of you men--you and you--load those ties in the freight car." He pointed to a pile which lay near the track. "Put some of them on the rails." Then when they were under way again, he yelled to Knight, "Stop around that next bend--we'll tear up a rail." The men streamed out again, when the train had come to a stop; they wrenched at the spikes with their inadequate tools, but the oak ties held them stubbornly. The task was little more than half completed when Andrews came running. "Pry it up--don't bother about the rest of the spikes. Give a hand, here." They slid a bar under the rail and pulled upward, straining. Slowly it bent; then broke. The men tumbled over each other down the embankment, a mixture of bodies, legs, arms and tools, with the rail clattering after them. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Tom was at the bottom of the heap; he struggled loose and climbed up to the track.