loaded them on the flat railroad cars. Then the
animal tent was taken down and packed into wagons with the poles and
pegs.

As each performer finished, he or she went to the dressing tent and
packed his trunk for transportation. From the dressing tent the actors
went to the sleeping car, and straight to bed.

Joe's acts went very well that night. He was applauded again and again
and he was quite pleased as he ran out of the tent to make ready for
the night journey. He saw Benny Turton changing into his ordinary
clothes from his wet fish-suit, which had to be packed in a rubber bag
for transportation after the night performance, there being no time to
dry it.

"Well, how goes it, Ben?" asked Joe.

"Oh, not very well," was the spiritless answer. "I've got lots of
pain."

"Too bad," said Joe in a comforting tone. "Maybe a good night's sleep
will fix you up."

"I hope so," said the "human fish."

The circus train was rumbling along the rails. It was the middle of
the night, and they were almost due at the town where next they would
show.

Joe, as well as the others in his sleeping car, was suddenly awakened
by a crash. The train swayed from side to side and rolled along
unevenly with many a lurch and bump.

"We're off the track!" cried Joe, as he rolled from his berth. And the
memory of the scrawled warning came vividly to him.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STRIKE

The circus train bumped along for a few hundred feet, the engine
meanwhile madly whistling, the wheels rattling over the wooden
sleepers, and inside the various cars, where the performers had been
suddenly awakened from their sleep, pandemonium reigned.

"What's the matter?" called Benny Turton from his berth near Joe's.

"Off the track--that's all," was the answer, given in a reassuring
voice. For Joe had, somehow or other, grasped the fact there was no
great danger unless they ran into something, and this, as yet, had not
happened.

The train was off the track (or at least some of the coaches were) but
it was quickly slowing down, and Joe, by a quick glance at his watch,
made a mental calculation of their whereabouts.

For several miles in the vicinity where the accident had occurred was a
long, and comparatively straight stretch of track, with no bridges and
no gullies on either side. A train running off the track, even if
going at fairly fast speed, would hardly topple over.

Before starting out that night Joe had inquired of one