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By Root 1343 0

than his driver’s. But the blizzard had wiped everything out. Jacques and Pecqueux both knew every kilometre of the line like the backs of their hands, but they could now scarcely recognize the places they were passing through; the track had disappeared beneath the snow, the hedges and even the houses seemed to have submerged. All that could be seen was a flat, unending plain, an undefined wilderness of white, through which La Lison seemed to be charging headlong, like a thing possessed. Never before had the two men experienced so intensely the ties of comradeship that united them, as when they stood together on the footplate of La Lison as she pursued her perilous course, feeling lonelier and more abandoned than if they had been locked away in a prison cell, and bearing the terrible, agonizing responsibility for all the lives that were being drawn along in the train behind them.

Pecqueux’s joke had angered Jacques, but he simply smiled and contained his annoyance; this wasn’t the time to quarrel. The snow was falling thicker than ever, and the horizon was closing in around them like a curtain. They were still climbing. Suddenly the fireman thought he saw a red signal in the distance. He shouted to his driver. But the signal had already disappeared. His eyes were ‘playing tricks on him’; a not infrequent complaint of his. The driver had seen nothing, but the fireman’s false alarm had disturbed him; his heart beat faster, he was beginning to lose confidence in himself. Beyond the whirling snowflakes he imagined he saw huge dark shapes, massive forms that loomed out of the night and moved towards them in front of the locomotive. Were they landslides that had piled up on the line? Was the train about to run into them? Seized with panic, he pulled frantically at the whistle; its long, mournful wail rose into the air above the noise of the storm. Much to his surprise, he had whistled at just the right moment, for the train was passing through Saint-Romain; he had thought it was two kilometres further on.

Once she had breasted the incline, La Lison began to run more easily, and Jacques could relax a little. From Saint-Romain to Bolbec the line was almost level, and there should be no further problems until they had crossed the plateau. Even so, during their three-minute stop at Beuzeville, Jacques called over to the stationmaster, whom he had spotted on the platform, to express his concern about the snow, which was getting deeper every minute. They would never make it to Rouen; while they were near a shed which always had spare engines in steam, the most sensible thing would be to attach an extra locomotive and double-head the train. But the stationmaster said he hadn’t received permission and he didn’t think that it was within his responsibility. The only thing he could think of was to provide them with five or six wooden shovels to clear the rails should the need arise. Pecqueux took the shovels and stowed them in a corner of the tender.

As expected, La Lison crossed the plateau without too much difficulty and maintained a good speed. But she was beginning to tire. Every minute Jacques had to stretch out his foot to open the firebox door so that his fireman could add more coal; each time he did so, the comet’s tail flashed across the night above the dark outline of the train, with whiteness all around, enclosing it like a shroud. It was a quarter to eight, and it was beginning to get light, although, in the great swirls of snow that filled the sky from one end of the horizon to the other, the dawn was hardly noticeable. It was a murky half-light in which nothing could yet be seen, making things even more difficult for the two men, whose eyes, despite their goggles, were streaming as they peered into the distance. Jacques kept one hand on the reversing wheel and the other on the whistle, sounding it almost continuously to warn of their approach and sending a wail of distress across the empty wastes of this desert of snow.

They passed through Bolbec and Yvetot without incident. At Motteville, Jacques again summoned the assistant