For the train, now only a hundred yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell.

Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness.

It was a ghost of a train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train.

It was as unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a sharp halt.

And instantly from every side men fell from it to the ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men.