I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed easing down.  I knew the train wasn’t going to stop, but my mind was made up to chance it if she slowed down sufficiently.  The right of way at this point took a curve, crossed a bridge over a canal, and cut through the town of Bristol.  This combination compelled slow speed.  I clung on to the side-ladder and waited.  I didn’t know it was the town of Bristol we were approaching.  I did not know what necessitated slackening in speed.  All I knew was that I wanted to get off.  I strained my eyes in the darkness for a street-crossing on which to land.  I was pretty well down the train, and before my car was in the town the engine was past the station and I could feel her making speed again.

Then came the street.  It was too dark to see how wide it was or what was on the other side.  I knew I needed all of that street if I was to remain on my feet after I struck.  I dropped off on the near side.  It sounds easy.  By “dropped off” I mean just this:  I first of all, on the side-ladder, thrust my body forward as far as I could in the direction the train was going—­this to give as much space as possible in which to gain backward momentum when I swung off.  Then I swung, swung out and backward, backward with all my might, and let go—­at the same time throwing myself backward as if I intended to strike the ground on the back of my head.  The whole effort was to overcome as much as possible the primary forward momentum the train had imparted to my body.  When my feet hit the grit, my body was lying backward on the air at an angle of forty-five degrees.  I had reduced the forward momentum some, for when my feet struck, I did not immediately pitch forward on my face.  Instead, my body rose to the perpendicular and began to incline forward.  In point of fact, my body proper still retained much momentum, while my feet, through contact with the earth, had lost all their momentum.  This momentum the feet had lost I had to supply anew by lifting them as rapidly as I could and running them forward in order to keep them under my forward-moving body.  The result was that my feet beat a rapid and explosive tattoo clear across the street.  I didn’t dare stop them.  If I had, I’d have pitched forward.  It was up to me to keep on going.

I was an involuntary projectile, worrying about what was on the other side of the street and hoping that it wouldn’t be a stone wall or a telegraph pole.  And just then I hit something.  Horrors!  I saw it just the instant before the disaster—­of all things, a bull, standing there in the darkness.  We went down together, rolling over and over; and the automatic process was such in that miserable creature that in the moment of impact he reached out and clutched me and never let go.  We were both knocked out, and he held on to a very lamb-like hobo while he recovered.