And, in the solitude of the night, the falsetto voice of Bob Rumble, who was feeble-minded, yelped behind us:

“Something’s following us!”

Nothing either living or mechanical, however, could have followed us at that speed, and besides, the people on the train were able to keep an eye on the level, empty track behind Bob Rumble. It is true that it was impossible to see the last few yards of the track behind the cars, for they only had lateral openings, and we riders could not look behind us. But it would have been most unlikely that anyone could have been traveling on that bumpy track. The dwarf must have been expressing his pride at having his puerile self towed behind us.

When the second day dawned, a strident and snoring sound, an immense vibration in which we seemed to be bathed, nearly drew the blood from my ears. I heard that the last, bullet-shaped car had been “turned loose,” and then replaced by a trumpet-shaped flying machine. It was revolving on its own axis, corkscrewing through the air just above the ground in front of us, while a furious wind was sucking us toward its funnel. The silken thread of the speedometer was still quivering regularly, tracing a vertical blue spindle against Corporal Gilbey’s cheek, and I read on its ivory dial, as had been predicted for that time, the number of kilometers per hour: 250.

The train had retained its previous position, with the same apparent immobility, prodigiously verifiable by all my senses, and even by the touch of my right hand; but the waterfall noise had become hyperacute, and just one millimeter away from the locomotive’s incandescent furnace, because of the speed, it was deathly cold.

Mr. W. Elson was invisible. I looked unhindered through one window after another into his car. Something blocked the glance I tried to cast into Miss Elson’s car. The first window of the long mahogany compartment, the only one within my line of sight, was obstructed, to my great stupefaction, on the outside, by a thick, scarlet covering. It seemed as though a growth of bleeding mushrooms had sprung up on the windowpane overnight. . .

It was now broad daylight, and I could not doubt what I saw: all that I could glimpse of the car was hidden by red roses; enormous, full-blown, and as fresh as if they had just been picked. Their perfume spread through the stillness of the air behind the shelter of the windshield.

When the girl lowered the window, part of the curtain of flowers was torn, but they did not fall immediately: for several seconds they traveled through space at the same speed as the machines; then the largest one, caught by a sudden gust, was swallowed up inside the car.