ous, and nervousness wakes a person
up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and
doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a
pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a
sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could discover it,
could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the
lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof that I would have the same
luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from the
airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far,
to be flung from a handcar.

But after all, there was but small danger-for me. What there was, was
for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of the Indian police, in whose
company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long
service as an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he
was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka and another
native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a
precipice we must put on our break [sp.] and send for another pilot.
It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of the
mountain-division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car,
and he had been down the mountain in it many a time.

Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail
left: the regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and
it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.

The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and
out around the crags and precipices, down, down, forever down, suggesting
nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide with
no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a
bow, and before I could get out of the car we were gone too. I had
previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and
that was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I
was discharged from the summit of a toboggan slide. But in both
instances the sensation was pleasurable--intensely so; it was a sudden
and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable
joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human
delight.

The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow
that is skimming the ground, so swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it
swept