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Updated: May 16, 2025
We sit in front on comfortable seats, a red flag on a bamboo overhead, a fat stationmaster and two natives behind, and two on the rails to shove, the shadow of the whole show running along beside us outlined on the ballast and sunny cactus hedge. The first miles were over somewhat sandy, gravelly ground, then through groves of palms, and mostly down hill.
The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter, who was just leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before night to Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained to play propriety for Dick and Esther.
There was a knocking and a calling "What ho within there!" and I got up in the grey dawn and found my cousins outside our carriage, looking rather chilled. A native stationmaster had promised to wire to them for me, to tell them we would finish our eight hours sleep at the Bangalore siding. But here they were and had received no wire! Therefore, put not your faith in native stationmasters.
The last-mentioned characteristics, you see, appear in the subject of our analysis; he agrees with the general description of a stationmaster. But if we therefore conclude that he is a stationmaster, we fall into the time-honoured fallacy of the undistributed middle term the fallacy that haunts all brilliant guessers, including the detective, not only of romance, but too often also of real life.
The stationmaster who got first prize was five miles from a supply, and his exhibit was one, almost dead flower, in a pot of dried earth; so that "system" was shelved. We walked round the village after tea and came to the above conclusions, that may possibly be useful to some brother artist.
I asked leave of the stationmaster to cross it, who said it was strictly forbidden, but that he was not a policeman, and that I might do it at my own risk. Thanking him, therefore, and considering how charming was the loose habit of small uncentralized societies, I went merrily on to the bridge, meaning to walk across it by stepping from sleeper to sleeper. But it was not to be so simple.
"But it isn't much use starting out to-night." The stationmaster looked proprietorially towards the station and the hotel site. There seemed room for tickets, and for the man who sold them if he were not a very large man. There was not much hope for visitors. "I'm running up a bosker hotel soon's I can get a bit of weather-boarding and a few nails along," he said hopefully.
"Next time yous come along we'll have had a drop o' rain, an' then you can drownd yourselfs if you want to," said the stationmaster. They started out at four o'clock with the information that Gaynor's Station was a collection of weather-board huts, a homestead put together by five lads from England who were trying to make a fortune each. They had not yet made a living between them.
Wireless telegraphs were set up to look like supports to iron chimneys. In the South African Campaign a Dutch stationmaster acted as field spy for the Boers for a short time. It was only a very short time. His town and station were captured by my force, and, in order to divert suspicion, he cut and pulled down the telegraph wires, all except one, which was left in working order.
This arrangement enabled us to receive 30 lbs. of ice daily from Allahabad, as a coolie was despatched from the station immediately upon arrival of the train, the address of our camp being daily communicated to the stationmaster.
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