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Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off; which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. Horses! can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards?
We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the mail-bags, the driver we and the sage-brush and the other scenery were all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance envelope in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw.
There, however, stood the diligenza which was somehow to convey me to Catanzaro; I watched its loading with luggage-merchandise and mail-bags whilst the exquisite evening melted into night.
"Your newspapers are, no doubt, in the mail-bags," he said. "We had a good passage, and are a full ship. Of passengers I have two and ladies. One, by the way, is the heiress of Mattei Perucca over at Olmeta, whom you doubtless knew." The colonel turned, and looked towards the steamer with some interest. "Is that so?" he said reflectively. "Yes; a pinched old maid in a black dress.
And the postman, not yet quite awake, not yet quite able to shake off the intoxicating sleep of youth and fatigue, was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire for the sake of which mail-bags, postal trains... and all things in the world, are forgotten.
Here's your health, Boss, and the Ladyship's. And the mailman gulped down his 'nobbler' and turned to remount the lean chestnut, which was standing hitched to the palings, observing cheerfully: 'Well, so long, Sir. Go'day, Ma'am. This sort of argufying ain't going to carry my mail-bags along the river. 'Go up to the Quarters and ask Mrs Hensor for a feed, called McKeith.
But we found out the truth that day, and for this reason it is among my clearest early recollections. "For, when the train stopped, they put off a big box and gently laid it in the shade of the fence. The only man at the station was the man who had come to change the mail-bags; and he said that this was Billy Morris's coffin and that he had been killed in a battle.
“This ill-will resulted in bringing our career to an end. On our return to Port Mahon we were ordered to escort an extremely slow old mail-packet to Gibraltar. What rendered it more ridiculous was that we were to carry the mail-bags, and only to hand them over to the old tub on her arrival at Gibraltar and were then to return without communication with the shore.
The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on.
For two days scores of men searched every likely spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags had been hung. Then some said it was a dream that guided them some one thought of an old, disused road along which there was possibility the lost men might have made their way.