“Right Away!”

“Same as the late Sir Henry Segrave had,” he observed. My heart thumped, page 30 for I noticed that within a minute we would be away.

A crowd of women, grey-haired men. and small boys stood on the platform looking on.

“We get a send-off every day,” said Albert, as he looked behind watching for the signal to leave.

Suddenly he sat upright. “Right away, Ben,” he called over the noise of the hissing steam and the roar of the draught across the top of the fire-box.

The signals had been dropped. Ben grasped a long, shining steel control lever—the regulator—and pulled firmly.

The massive bulk beneath my feet shivered slightly, and we started to move—slowly, gently, with the growing rumble of heavy wheels beneath.

Albert climbed down from his perch now and motioned me into his place.

“I never sit down once we start,” he shouted above the deep roar of the exhaust from the squat smoke-stack ahead.

Trembling, breathless from the effect of the sudden cataclysm that had taken place, awed by the thunder of machinery and the piercing shriek of steam, I crawled on the seat as we plunged at once into the inky blackness of a tunnel.