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"Shut off, you Irish madman!" was the shouted command. "Don't you see you're on the wrong division?" Callahan gave the throttle-bar another outward hitch, tipped his seat and took a hammer from the tool-box. "I know where I'm goin', an' that's more thin you know, ye blandhanderin' divil! Up on that box wit' you, an' kape out av Jimmy Shovel's road, or I'll be the death av yez! Climb, now!"
"See how they have laid this throttle-bar of violets across these Galax leaves and latched it with a rose. Here, Solomon," she exiled the boy from an adjoining room, "take this very carefully. No. There isn't any card. Oh," she exclaimed, as he left, and she clasped her lifted hands, "I am glad, I am glad we are leaving these mountains. Do you know papa is to be here to-morrow?
He chucked the cushion forward below her feet and was about to sit up where she had made room for him when the engineer put both hands to the throttle-bar and shut off. For the first time since they had started Gertrude saw him look around. "Where's Point of Rocks?" he called to Glover as they slowed, and he looked at his watch. "I'm afraid we're by." "By?" echoed Glover. "It looks so."
Yet his gauntleted hand never falls from the throttle-bar to the air-cock, and his eyes never leave the bubble appearing and disappearing at longer intervals in the heel of the water-glass. Shovel has stopped firing, and is hanging out of his window for the straining look ahead. Suddenly he drops to the footplate to grip Callahan's arm. "See!" he says.
Before he got back, Halkett was under the cab window of the 1010, demanding to know with many objurgations why Callahan had stopped in the middle of the yards. "Get a move on you!" he shouted. "The express is right behind us, and it'll run us down, you damned bog-trotter!" Callahan's gauntleted hand shot up to the throttle-bar. "I'm l'avin', Misther Halkett," he said mildly.
Callahan's reply was another flourish of the hammer, and a sudden outpulling of the throttle-bar; and the superintendent subsided again. But enforced silence and the grindstone of conscious helplessness will sharpen the dullest wit. The swerving lurch of the 1010 around the next curve set Halkett clutching for hand-holds, and the injector lever fell within his grasp.
Once again the thought of his motherless child flickers into the engineer's brain; then he releases the air and throws his weight backward upon the throttle-bar.
He had time to yell at his fireman, to fling himself upon the throttle-bar and to set the airbrake before he began to turn Irish handsprings down the embankment; but the wrecking crew camped two whole days at Delhi gathering up the debris.
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