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Updated: June 27, 2025
It is well to cross the Sand Sea as soon after daybreak as possible, for by mid-morning the heat is like a blast from an open furnace-door. It is a four mile ride across the Sand Sea to the lower slopes of Bromo, but the sand is firm and hard and we let the ponies break into a gallop an exhilarating change from the tedious crawl necessary in the mountains.
There was a choking sensation in his throat, as he remembered the face disclosed by the lightning a few moments before, and realized the awful danger that now threatened the sunny-haired girl who had been his playmate, and was still his friend. With a desperate energy he flung open the furnace-door, and toiled to feed the roaring flames behind it.
John Saggart stood in a dark corner of the terminus, out of the rays of the glittering arc lamps, and watched engine Number Eighty-six. The engineer was oiling her, and the fireman, as he opened the furnace-door and shovelled in the coal, stood out like a red Rembrandt picture in the cab against the darkness beyond.
Christy steered the tug alongside of the steamer; and when he rang the bell finally to stop her, after a rope had been heaved on board of her, he left the engine, with the steam still escaping from the boiler, and the furnace-door wide open, and went to the pilot-house. "Hurry up!" shouted Captain Breaker, appearing on the rail of the Bellevite, at the gangway.
The voice of a man in authority shouted loud commands. No demonstration came from the outer voids, nothing but the wicked streaks that stabbed the darkness. Then suddenly, behind McNamara's men, the night glared luridly as though a great furnace-door had opened and then clanged shut, while with it came a hoarse thudding roar that silenced the rifle play.
The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened, lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset.
The fireman is continually swinging open the furnace-door, whereat a red shine flows out upon the floor of the cab, and shoveling in immense mouthfuls of coal to a fire that is almost diabolic in its madness. The feeding, feeding, feeding goes on until it appears as if it is the muscles of the fireman's arms that are speeding the long train.
"That's right," said the policeman, as the stoker, who was an obliging man, took up a great shovel and flung open the furnace-door. A terrific glare of intense heat and light shot out, appearing as if desirous of licking the stoker and policeman into its dreadful embrace. "I don't half like it," said the stoker, glancing in; "the Postmaster-General might object, you know."
"Who was that?" rejoined Cornelius, for he had partly forgotten the story he knew well enough in childhood. "We will not talk about him now," answered his mother. "He has been knocking at your chamber-door for some time: when he comes to the furnace-door, perhaps you will open that to him."
The rushing sound had become a dull continuous thunder. Her eyes strained into the darkness. Of a sudden the horizon flamed. A train was passing a quarter of a mile away, and the furnace-door of the engine had just been opened to feed the fire, whose strength sped the carriages to far-off London.
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