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Engine 122, with Ed Stokes at the throttle, was just backing down as I came out, so I ran back, signed the orders, and as soon as the doctors arrived, Mr. Antwerp told me to pull out and take charge, saying he would come out if necessary on a special. It was scarcely five minutes from the time I received the first message until we pulled out and started on our wild ride of rescue.
The affair recalled the worst disasters of American railways. The river crossed by the railway was full of broken carriages and the engine. Whether the weight of the train had been too much for the bridge, or whether the train had gone off the rails, the fact remained that five carriages out of six fell into the bed of the Loddon, dragged down by the locomotive.
The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six per cent.
Louis and Macpherson overhauled the engine, and pronounced it in A-1 condition when it left the test bench. Every one of the boys learned much about aircraft construction, at least so far as that type of biplane was concerned, before they were through with the job.
So accurate were Gilmore's guns aimed that two shells burst in the burning buildings; and the negroes told us that one struck an engine, entirely destroying it, and killing several firemen. One shell struck our wall, tearing it nearly down. Several pieces of shell came into the yard where we were, but no one was injured.
The boys found it impossible to speak to each other because of the noise of the engine and the water. The heat was oppressive. From time to time the officer in command of the three torpedoes looked at his watch or at the compass, both of which he carried around his wrist. Intently the men all watched the signboard on the wall in front of them. The storm without made itself felt even in the depth.
For some reason, however—it is said because the engine was deemed too light for drawing the coal-trains—it never left the works, but was dismounted from the wheels, and set to blow the cupola of the foundry, in which service it long continued to be employed. Several years elapsed before Mr. Blackett took any further steps to carry out his idea.
The cars were dragged up the inclined plane by a hawser attached to an engine, which hawser, had the stress broken it, as I could not but fancy probable, would have flown back and cut to pieces a lot of us who were standing in front of the car. But I do not think that any such accident would have caused very much attention. Life and limbs are not held to be so precious here as they are in England.
The biggest event of those early years was meeting with a road engine about eight miles out of Detroit one day when we were driving to town. I was then twelve years old. The second biggest event was getting a watch which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen.
It does not seem strange that strong men should have died by a single ecstasy of emotion too convulsive, when we bear within us this tremendous engine whose slightest pulsation so throbs in every fibre of our frame.
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