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Updated: May 20, 2025
Ever and anon a little puff issued from its safety-valve, proving to John Marrot that there was life within his fiery steed sufficient to have blown the shed to wreck with all its brother engines, of which there were at the time two or three dozen standing some disgorging their fire and water after a journey, and preparing to rest for the night; some letting off steam with a fiendish yell unbearably prolonged; others undergoing trifling repairs preparatory to starting next day, and a few, like that of our engine-driver, ready for instant action and snorting with impatience like war-horses "scenting the battle from afar."
"If I had only been a bridge-builder or an engine-driver," he thought; "anything except this beastly " But he was wool-gathering again. He pulled himself together and started at a rapid pace for the tower, where he found Feller sitting by the table, one leg over the other easily, engaged in the prosaic business of sewing a button on his blouse. Lanstron rapped; no answer.
A very fat ox was this, protesting every moment against his employment, where speed, his duty, and sloth, his nature, kept him bewildered by their rival injunctions. Whenever the engine-driver stopped to pick a huckleberry, the train, self-braking, stopped also, and the engine took in fuel from the tall grass that grew between the sleepers. It was the sensation of sloth at its uttermost.
"In the sweet by-and-bye We shall meet on that be-yeautiful shore." . . . "Among these million Suns how shall the strayed Soul find her way back to earth?" The man was an engine-driver, thick-set and heavy, with a short beard grizzled at the edge, and eyes perpetually screwed up, because his life had run for the most part in the teeth of the wind. The lashes, too, had been scorched off.
And I'm an engine-driver, as you well may see, and there's no denying it's terribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my missus is fair tired of washing of 'em. If you'll wash a few shirts for me when you get home, and send 'em along, I'll give you a ride on my engine. It's against the Company's regulations, but we're not so very particular in these out-of-the-way parts."
Now, men, aim low, and don't waste any shots." He and Sinclair climbed over the tender and spoke to the engine-driver. "How are the air-brakes working?" asked Sinclair. "First-rate." "Then, if you slow down now, you could stop the train in a third of her length, couldn't you?" "Easy, if you don't mind being shaken up a bit." "That is good. How is the country about the xth mile-post?"
When the others turned towards her she was lying across the line with her hands flung forward and still gripping the sticks of the little red flannel flags. The engine-driver picked her up, carried her to the train, and laid her on the cushions of a first-class carriage. "Gone right off in a faint," he said, "poor little woman. And no wonder.
The passengers, still waiting after twenty years' delay, thinking perhaps the train would never start again, were now impatient. They had caught their engine-driver again at last. Steam was up. Already the blackbirds whistled. And something utterly wild and reckless in him passionately broke its bonds with a flood of longings that no amount of years or 'Cities' could ever subdue again.
The line is a single one you notice, all the way, except at certain places, where there are loops to allow trains to pass each other in the same way as on some tram-lines. After waiting some time the engine-driver steamed slowly ahead. He climbed on and up, and went very slowly, expecting at every turn to meet the relief engine, or find it waiting for him, held up at a bridge.
The great parabolic head-light illuminated the track a long way in advance, all behind it being of course in darkness. Suddenly Sinclair cried out: "The fools have a light there, as I am a living man; and there is a little red one near us. What can that be? All ready, Jack! By heaven! they have taken up two rails. Now hold on, all! The engine-driver shut his throttle-valve with a jerk.
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