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"You somehow make me feel that something may come of it; but I've been badgered about and accused and cross-examined from one to another of them these weeks till it's fairly made me bitter against everything. And now they talk of putting me in a lavatory me that has been with the company for five and forty years and on the foot-plate thirty-two a man suspected of running past a danger signal."
Bodily, poor fellow, he was on the foot-plate of the Lightning, which is as much as to say that he was everywhere by turns, and nowhere long. Mrs Marrot was there too, and baby, with Nanny Stocks as his guardian. Miss Stocks's chief employment during the evening appeared to be to forget herself in the excess of her delight, and run baby's head against all sorts of things and persons.
Down the middle of the garden path came the two truants, Susan in her sables and Mr. Wyse close beside her with his coat-collar turned up. Her ample form with the small round head on the top looked like a short-funnelled locomotive engine, and he like the driver on the foot-plate. The perfidious things had said they were going to consult over the orchid. Did orchids grow on the lawn?
"We can go out the other way," he said; and the secretary pro tempore had no excuse for following. They found the cab of the 1012 deserted, with the steam in the huge boiler singing softly at the behest of the banked fire. Miss Adair lost her curiosity as soon as Ford had lifted her to the foot-plate. "Now you are to tell me all about it quickly," she commanded.
I made out, sir, a man I couldn't tell who dash out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir, I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards in Rincon and one other place.
He was about to call for volunteers to replace the driver, when Seth, who all the time had been working in the cab, and who had heard the news of the trouble, leant over the rail that protected the foot-plate. "Say, Dan," he said. "If none of the boys are scared to ride behind me, and I don't figger they are, I'll pump the old kettle along. Guess I've fired a traction once.
The train steamed in, and the passengers began to alight. Daphne scanned them eagerly. "I don't see her," she said half to herself. We were standing half-way down the platform, and I turned and looked listlessly towards the front of the train. That end of the platform was empty except for two people. One was a stoker who had stepped off the foot-plate. The other was Alice.
"I desire to go now!" was the irascible reply. "Is that sufficiently explicit?" "It is," said Ford; and he left the presence to go forward to the cab of the waiting engine. "You are to take the car over the mountain, Hector," he said briefly, to the beetle-browed giant in blue denim, when he had climbed to the foot-plate. "I'll pilot for you." "How far?" inquired the engineer.
I can say that I saw them go through the van, that I followed them, that I found they were talking on the gangway, that I heard the screams of the driver and stoker as they were strangled on the foot-plate, and that I then returned to the cars shouting: "Back! Back!" or whatever it was.
John beside him, with a huge mass of coal in one hand concealed behind his back. There was a space of little more than two feet between the engines. To leap that in the face of a madman seemed impossible. Suddenly John Marrot hurled the mass of coal with all his might. His aim was to hit Thomson on the head, but it struck low, hitting him on the chest, and driving him down on the foot-plate.
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