By the green fires of the junction-signals, rails started to glitter with a gloomy metallic glaze that curved along with the cold iron serpents. Here and there, in the shadowy twilight, a conductor’s lamp flickered faintly, a lineman’s signal blinked. In the distance, far beyond the station, where the emerald eyes of lanterns were being extinguished, a semaphore was making night signals.

Here, leaving its horizontal position, the arm of the semaphore rose to an angle of forty-five degrees: the passenger train from Brzesk was approaching.

One could already hear the panting respiration of the locomotive, the rhythmic clatter of the wheels; one could already see the bright-yellow glass at its front. The train is heading into the station….

From its open windows lean out the golden locks of children, the curious faces of women; welcoming kerchiefs are waved.

The throngs waiting on the platform push violently towards the coaches, outstretched hands on both sides tend towards a meeting….

What kind of commotion is that to the right? Strident whistles rend the air. The stationmaster is shouting something in a hoarse, wild voice.

‘Away! Get back, run! Reverse steam! Backwards! Backwards!... Collision!’

The masses throw themselves in a dense onrush towards the banisters, breaking them. Frenzied eyes instinctively look to the right—where the railway employees have gathered—and see the spasmodic, aimlessly frantic vibrations of lanterns endeavouring to turn back a train, which, with its entire momentum, is coming from the opposite side of the track occupied by the Brzesk passenger train. Shrill whistles cut the desperate responses of bugles and the hellish tumult of people. In vain! The unexpected locomotive is getting closer, with terrifying velocity; the enormous green lights of the engine weirdly push aside the darkness, the powerful pistons move with fabulous, possessed efficiency.

From a thousand breasts a horrible alarm bursts out, a cry swelled by a fathomless panic:

‘It’s the insane train! The madman! On the ground! Help! On the ground! We’re lost! Help! We’re lost!’

Some type of gigantic, grey mass passes by—an ashen, misty mass with cut-out windows from end to end. One can feel the gust of a satanic draught from these open holes, hear the flapping, maddeningly blown-about shutters; one can almost see the spectral faces of the passengers…..

Suddenly something strange occurs. The insane, rapacious train, instead of shattering its comrade, passes through it like a mist; for a moment one can see the fronts of the two trains go through each other, one can see the noiseless grazing of the coach walls, the paradoxical osmosis of gears and axles; one more second, and the intruder permeates with lightning fury through the train’s solid body and disappears somewhere in the field on the other side. Everything quietens down….

On the track, before the station, the intact Brzesk passenger train stands peacefully. About it, a great bottomless silence. Only from the meadows, there in the distance, comes the low chirp of crickets, only along the wires above flows the gruff chat of the telegraph….

The people on the platform, the railwaymen, the clerks rub their eyes and look about in amazement.

Had what they seen really happened, or was it just a strange hallucination?

Slowly, all eyes, united in the same impulse, turn towards the Brzesk train—it continues to stand silent and still. From inside, lamps burn with a steady, quiet light; at the open windows the breeze plays gently on the curtains.

A grave silence inhabits the cars; no one is disembarking, no one is leaning out from within. Through the illuminated quadrangle windows one can see the passengers: men, women, and children; everyone whole, uninjured—no one has received even the most minor contusion. Yet their state is strangely puzzling.

Everyone is in a standing position, facing the direction of the vanished phantom locomotive. Some terrible force has bewitched these people, holding them in dumb amazement; some strong current has polarized this assembly of souls to one side.