If anything goes wrong
eternity is too close to consider. There comes a muffled drumming on the
steam-chests--a stagger and a terrific impact--and then the recoil like
the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shoots into the air fifty feet,
and the wind carries a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of
the cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of
the engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful blow.

Pausing for hardly a breath, the signalling again began. Then the
backing; up and up and up the line; and again the massive machines were
hurled screaming into the cut.

"You're getting there, Georgie," exclaimed Sankey, when the rolling and
lurching had stopped. No one else could tell a thing about it, for it
was snow and snow and snow; above and behind, and ahead and beneath.
Sinclair coughed the flakes out of his eyes and nose and mouth like a
baffled collie. He looked doubtful of the claim until the mist had blown
clear and the quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it
was plain that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.

Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing
the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again as the drivers stuck
they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the
unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties.

Slowly and sullenly the machines were backed again.

"She's doing the work, Georgie," cried Sankey. "For that kind of a cut
she's as good as a rotary. Look everything over now while I go back and
see how the boys are standing it. Then we'll give her one more, and give
it the hardest kind."

And they did give her one more--and another. Men at Santiago put up no
stouter fight than they made that Sunday morning in the canon of the
Blackwood. Once and twice more they went in. And the second time the
bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and
gained against the white wall--heaved and stumbled ahead--and with a
yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the Double Header shot
her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine
flew past the divided walls, each cab took up the cry--it was the
wildest shout that ever crowned victory.

Through they went and half-way across the bridge before they could check
their monster catapult. Then at a half-full they shot it back at the
cut--it worked as well one way as the other.

"The thing is d