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Down in the United States I am accustomed to going underneath on rapidly moving trains, seizing a gunnel and swinging my feet under to the brake-beam, and from there crawling over the top of the truck and down inside the truck to a seat on the cross-rod. Feeling with my hands in the darkness, I learn that there is room between the brake-beam and the ground. It is a tight squeeze.
With a bound they went into the air, and the great car flung itself at them. Both reached the top of the end-board with their outstretched hands, and gripped tenaciously. As they swung against it, it seemed the car would shake them off. But clinging desperately, they got their feet on the brake-beam, and in another moment had tumbled headlong within.
I must make my get-away pretty lively. I crawl on my stomach under the brake-beam. They see me and run for me, but I crawl on hands and knees across the rail on the opposite side and gain my feet. Then away I go for the head of the train. I run past the engine and hide in the sheltering darkness. It is the same old situation. I am ahead of the train, and the train must go past me.
"It's up to you, Danforth," he said, raising his voice to be heard above the pounding roar of the wheels. "You're the youngest and lightest: get down on the 1010's brake-beam and unhook those chains." The secretary looked once into the trap with the dodging jaws and the backward-flying bottom and declined the honor. "I can't get down there," he cried. "And I shouldn't know what to do if I could."
Got to climb down ten stories of a hotel elevator cable, and ride a brake-beam and be pushed off a cliff and thrown to the lions, and a few other little things." "That's good, Flips. Come in and see me some time. Have a little chat. Ma working?" "Yeah got a character bit with Charlotte King in Her Other Husband." "Glad to hear it. How's Pa Montague?" "Pa's in bed.
I'd have sworn my cantilever was the only one that could span Michamac Strait." "And then to have your plans lost!" put in Griffith with keen sympathy beneath his dry croak. "Hell! That bridge would have landed you at the top of the ladder in one jump." "Losing those plans landed me on a brake-beam, after my worst spree ever," muttered Blake. "Don't wonder," said Griffith.
Shabby, shuffling, his coat-collar turned up and secured with a safety-pin, he poked through Tompkins Square, on sunny days, or talked for hours to hoboes who scorned him as a man without experience of brake-beam and rods, of hoboes' hangouts and the Municipal Lodging House.
Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces.
Say, Jimmie, he laughed, 'when that tintype of yours begins to lay down on you, just bear in mind that my pilot is under the ol' man's rear brake-beam, and that the headlight of the 99 is haunting him. "'Don't get gay, now, said the engineer of the White Mail.
Once more the superintendent exhibited his nerve. He had nothing at stake save a desire to defeat Callahan; but he had the persistent courage of the bull-terrier. With Bucks and the secretary to steady him he lowered himself in the gap till he could stand upon the brake-beam of the 1010's tender and grope with one free hand for the hook of the nearest safety-chain.
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