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Before we had quite reached the railway I ordered the vanguard to remain with the President, whilst I myself, with fifteen men, rode on to cut the telegraph wire. Whilst we were engaged in this task a train approached at full speed from the south. I had no dynamite with me, and I could neither blow it up nor derail it.
Is it the inventor of the locomotive, or the workman of Newcastle, who suggested replacing the stones formerly laid under the rails by wooden sleepers, as the stones, for want of elasticity, caused the trains to derail? Is it the engineer on the locomotive? The signalman who stops the trains, or lets them pass by? The switchman who transfers a train from one line to another?
An' shure they don't niver obsthruct a track till the last minute." "But, Casey, once through the pass you can't control that gravel- car. The brakes won't hold. You'll run square into the general's train wreck it!" "Naw! I've got a couple of ties, an' if thot wreck threatens I'll heave a tie off on the track an' derail me private car." "Casey, it's sure death!" exclaimed Collins.
Three lights were grouped close about the stand, and after the rod had been thrown, Glover went down on his knee feeling for the points under the snow with his hands before he could signal the engine back; one thing he could not afford, a derail. She saw him rise again and saw, dimly, both his arms spread upward and outward.
Looking at the matter superficially it seems a very barbarous thing to derail and destroy trains with dynamite, but this was the only course left open to us, since large military stores were being continually brought in by the British from the coast.
Bucks shook his head. "If that is the case, we'll have to be doing something on our own account. The next obstruction may derail us." Halkett stepped into the car and pulled the cord of the automatic air. "No good," he muttered. "The Irishman bled our tank before he started. Help me set the hand brakes, a couple of you."
To derail a train is legitimate warfare, with many precedents to support it. But to checkmate it by putting hostages upon the trains is likewise legitimate warfare, with many precedents to support it also. The Germans habitually did it in France, and the result justified them as the result has justified us.
"You don't mean to say they will derail the train!" he said anxiously. Then I knew that Petey was going to win my dress suit. I assured the Reverend pshaw, I'm tired of saying all that! I'm going to save breath. I assured Diggsey that derailing was the kindest thing ever done to trains by Siwash students, but that as his hosts we would stand by him, whatever happened.
"No machine guns yet," he said for the second time, showing the apprehension that was in his mind. I, too, had been listening for the staccato of the machine gun, which is the most penetrating, mechanical and wicked, to my mind, of all the instruments of the terrible battle orchestra, as sinister as the clicking of a switch which you know will derail a passenger train.
Apprehensive, he crawled back on the coal to watch the caboose himself, and stayed long enough to see that the rapidly drifting snow threatened to derail the outfit any minute. He got back to the cab and ordered a stop. "This won't do!" said he to Stevens and the engineman. "We can't back that caboose loaded with men through this storm. We shall be off the track in five minutes."
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