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Updated: June 5, 2025
The small man grasped the iron rod attached to the side of one of the moving coal-cars and swung his foot into the iron stirrup beneath. His companion mounted the next car in the same way. "Are you all right, Kersh?" shouted back the small tramp, standing safe above the "bumpers." "All right," replied the tall tramp, climbing upon the end of a car. "But don't ever call me Kersh any more.
The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were as good as we had a right to expect.
So five hundred of the horseless riders were piled into a train of empty coal-cars, each man carrying on his person in blanket roll and haversack whatever baggage he was allowed to take, and they were rattled noisily away to Port Tampa, where, after much vexatious delay, they finally boarded the transport Yucatan, and felt that they were fairly off for Cuba. But not yet.
At three o'clock we received orders to march over to an entirely different track, and away we went. No train appeared on this track either; but at six o'clock some coal-cars came by, and these we seized. By various arguments we persuaded the engineer in charge of the train to back us down the nine miles to Port Tampa, where we arrived covered with coal-dust, but with all our belongings.
When the mechanical hunger was sated; when he had started and stopped every engine in the big plant, had handled the levers of the great steam-hoist that shot the coal-cars from the mine to the coke-yard bins, and had prevailed on the engineer of the dinkey engine to let him haul out and dump a pot of slag, he had a sharp relapse into the primitive, and went roaming afield in search of his lost boyhood.
"I suppose after hammering him senseless they set him adrift on that hand-car, hoping it would finish him and hide their crime," he hazarded. "Looks like it," was Cullin's short answer as once more he climbed to his station. Ten minutes later they were slowly trundling in among a maze of tracks and sidings, with long trains of gondolas, coal-cars, and dingy-brown freight-boxes on both sides.
The fuel problem was one of transportation quite as much as of production; the railroads were unable to furnish the needed coal-cars, and because of an expensive and possibly unfair system of car allotment, coal distribution was hampered.
After three hours of waiting we were sent to another switch, and finally at six o'clock in the morning got possession of some coal-cars and came down in them. When we reached the quay where the embarkation was proceeding, everything was in utter confusion. The quay was piled with stores and swarming with thousands of men of different regiments, besides onlookers, etc.
It is a fact that there is a peculiar psychology incidental to being in jail; just as there is a peculiar psychology incidental to straining your back and breaking your hands loading coal-cars in a five foot vein; and another, and quite different psychology, produced by living at ease off the labours of coal-miners.
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