We were strapped tightly to the machine, so that we didn’t fall off, in this order: at the back, myself – Ted Oxborrow; in front of me, Jewey Jacobs, George Webb, Sammy White – a Negro – and Bill Gilbey, the leader of our team, whom we jokingly called Corporal Gilbey because he was in charge of four men. I don’t count a dwarf, Bob Rumble, tossing in a trailer behind us, whose counterweight served to increase or decrease the traction of our rear wheel.

At regular intervals Corporal Gilbey passed to us over his shoulder the small, colorless, crumbly, and bitter-tasting cubes of Perpetual Motion Food that were our only nourishment for nearly five days. He took them five at a time from a small platform behind the starting car. Beneath this platform glowed the white dial of the speedometer, and underneath the dial a revolving drum was suspended, to cushion any shocks to the front wheel of our machine.

When night began to fall, this drum, unseen by the people on the train, was connected to the wheels of the starting car so as to revolve in the opposite direction to them. Corporal Gilbey had us pull forward so that our front wheel rested against the drum; they locked together like gears, and we were towed, effortlessly and fraudulently, during the first hours of the night.

Sheltered behind the starting car, there was of course not a breath of air. On our right the locomotive, looking like a big, good-natured animal, seemed to be grazing in the same part of our visual “field,” neither advancing nor receding. Its only apparent motion was a slight trembling of its flank – where, apparently, the drive shaft was oscillating. In front it had a cowcatcher whose bars, which looked like prison bars or the grille on a water mill, could be counted. It was all rather like a peaceful scene by a river – the silent flow of the smooth track being the river itself, and the regular bubbling of the great beast seeming like the sound of a waterfall.

I caught several glimpses of Mr. Elson, with his long white beard, through the windows of the first car, rocking up and down as though nonchalantly seated in a rocking chair.

The big, curious eyes of Miss Elson also appeared for a moment at the first door of the second car, which was as far as I could see by craning my neck.

Mr. Gough’s small, busy, blond-mustached silhouette never left the platform of the locomotive. For, although William Elson was following the race aboard the train, it was nevertheless in the hope of seeing the train beaten, while for Mr. Gough, the large sum he had wagered stimulated him to exert every effort of his engine-driving abilities.

Sammy White was humming, in time with the strokes of our legs, the little nursery rhyme: Twinkle, twinkle, little star. . .