locomotive! Looking up quickly, we saw a train, not a quarter of a
mile away, which was coming towards us at full speed. We stood
paralyzed for a moment. We did not know what to do. In a minute, or
less, the train would be on the bridge and we had not, or thought we
had not, time to get off of it, whether we went forward or backward.

But we could not stand on that narrow path of boards while the train
was passing. The cars would almost touch us. What could we do? I
believe that if we had had time, we would have climbed down on the
trestle-work below the bridge, and so let the train pass over us. But
whatever could be done must be done instantly, and we could think of
nothing better than to get outside of the railing and hold on as well
as we could. In this position we would, at any rate, be far enough
from the cars to prevent them from touching us. So out we got, and
stood on the ends of the timbers, holding fast to the slender
hand-rail. And on came the train! When the locomotive first touched
the bridge we could feel the shock, and as it came rattling and
grinding over the rails towards us--coming right on to us, as it
seemed--our faces turned pale, you may well believe.

But the locomotive did not run off the track just at that exact spot
where we were standing--a catastrophe which, I believe, in the bottom
of our hearts, every one of us feared. It passed on, and the train
came thundering after it. How dreadfully close those cars did come to
us! How that bridge did shake and tremble in every timber; and how we
trembled for fear we should be shaken off into the river so far below
us! And what an enormously long train it was! I suppose that it took,
really, but a very short time to pass, but it seemed to us as if there
was no end to it at all, and as if it would never, never get entirely
over that bridge!