Passepartout took his seat without telling what had passed.

The whist-players were quite absorbed in their game.
The locomotive whistled vigorously; the engineer, reversing the steam, backed the train for nearly a mile--retiring, like a jumper, in order to take a longer leap.

Then, with another whistle, he began to move forward; the train increased its speed, and soon its rapidity became frightful; a prolonged screech issued from the locomotive; the piston worked up and down twenty strokes to the second.

They perceived that the whole train, rushing on at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, hardly bore upon the rails at all.
And they passed over! It was like a flash.

No one saw the bridge.
The train leaped, so to speak, from one bank to the other, and the engineer could not stop it until it had gone five miles beyond the station.