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About a dozen men, led by a sergeant, broke suddenly away from the eastward flank of each of the two companies thus moved, and, without so much as an audible word, scattered away to the passenger-cars, covering a hundred yards of their length in a dozen seconds. Then under the cars dove some of the lot, up the steps sprang others, and away before them scattered the intruders.
Whether the unfortunate worked a subterranean passage to one of the passenger-cars and there buried himself in the privacy of a saloon is not known; he certainly was not seen again till after relief came to the imprisoned train. There was neither noise nor confusion in the matter of paying for and dividing the poultry. Samson Newell had already made himself prominent among the captive travellers.
Oliver admired Daniels, as he did any man who could do big things in a big way. Daniels had an exhibition of locomotives and passenger-cars at the Chicago Exposition, and personally spent much time there.
The Arab engine-driver, piloting his charge through no-man's land, where the bones of former train crews lay bleaching, simply because he was an engine-driver and that was his job; the freight in locked steel cars consigned by optimists who hoped it might reach its destination; the four guards armed with worn-out rifles that they did not dare use; the four passenger-cars with their window-glass all shot away; the half-dozen Arab artisans carried along for makeshift repairs en route; and the more than brave the too-fatalist-to-care-much passengers wondering which of their number had an enemy at every halting-place; and along with that the formalism the observance of conventions such as blowing the whistle and pulling down the signal, on a track that carried one train one way once a week; it made you feel like taking off your hat to it all, reminding me in a vague way of those Roman legionaries who kept up the semblance of their civilization after the power of Rome had waned.
I had bestowed so much effort on it, and I gave myself credit for having made a fine job of it Arriving at the big store, I made my way to the sample-rooms. I did so by a freight-elevator, the passenger-cars being denied to men carrying sample-cases.
This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it sufficient to extend about the four sides of the studio something like seventy feet. He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The Great Pullman Line."
There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip.
"I've a crazy man up-stairs. He can't do very much harm, for he is badly injured." "How?" I asked. "Railroad accident. Four days ago, locomotive and two passenger-cars off the track, down forty feet upon the rocks and stones, and all there was of a river," my father replied, with evident regret that the company had been so unfortunate, as well as his individual self.
Railways run along the inner border of the docks on a street between them and the town, and along their tracks horses draw the freight-cars, while double-decked passenger-cars also run upon them with broad wheels fitting the rails, yet capable of being run off whenever the driver wishes to get ahead of the slowly-moving freight-cars.
And as to the occupants of the passenger-cars, Sir, they are as happy a set of gentlemen as one might desire to see of a summer's day. They feel that they are in progress; they hope they shall not be run off the track; and when they reach the end of their journey, they desire to be thankful! The arduous struggle is now all over.