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Updated: May 10, 2025
He timed it to that of the gravel-train, which came slowly creaking nearer, rocking over the uneven tracks, then down upon the half-submerged rails which terminated near the opposing grade. It stopped finally, with headlight glaring into the faces of Denny and his troops, and from the high-heaped flat cars tumbled an army of pick-and-shovel men.
The headlight on the squat locomotive floods the way ahead, suddenly illumining the figure of a blinking old man laden with nets and three barelegged children who scream, "Bonsoir, monsieur," to the engineer. What glorious old days are these!
Ten minutes later the headlight of the last passenger swung around the curve and carried me away to Panama. That might have done for the day, but I had gathered a momentum it was hard to check. Not long after returning from the police mess to the swivel chair a slight omission in the day's program occurred to me. I called up Corozal police station.
The men on the tender promptly raised an uproar, the fireman shouted as he jerked the whistle cord, and Jawn sat with one eye on the indicator, the other on the approaching headlight, his bass voice all the while roaring out a fiery challenge not unmixed with profanity. The engineer of McNally's special had received no orders to sacrifice his engine, and had no desire to sacrifice himself.
Then the work of extricating the imprisoned ones began, light for it being obtained by the backing of Williams's engine to the main line above the switch so that the headlight played upon the scene.
Even the face of bartender Mick, with its stiff unshaven red beard and its single eye, merciless as an electric headlight, its broad flaming scar leading down from the blank socket of its mate, became less repulsive under the softened light.
Mallory, you see that the train is perfectly dark. We might as well try a little bluffing even if we do strike them. They won't know but what we've got five hundred men aboard, and the others will reach us before they find it out." Mallory clambered over the coal in the tender, while the fireman crawled out on the running board and extinguished the headlight.
Behind Miss Porter hovered the motherly Esmeralda. She, too, was happy, for was she not returning to her beloved Maryland? Already she could see dimly through the fog of smoke the murky headlight of the oncoming engine. The men began to gather up the hand baggage. Suddenly Clayton exclaimed. "By Jove! I've left my ulster in the waiting-room," and hastened off to fetch it.
As the engine rounded turns, the headlight threw its rays up serried columns of granite half a mile high, columns that rear their height in grotesque form and Gothic arch, polished by the waters of ages.
Bob was the first to cry, pointing to a brilliant headlight just rounding into view on the distant track. "Jolly, I'll bet Sally's wide awake, if she ever was in her life!" "I expect we're going to find out now how dreadfully short twenty minutes can be," said Janet Ferry to Jarvis, beside whom she stood, an attractively put-up basket of hot-house grapes in her hand.
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