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The sound came from below, and with a muttered ejaculation, full of vexation, the boy darted to the head of the steps, and rushed down in the darkness at a break-neck speed, which ended in a big jump on to the stone-floor, from whence he rushed toward the window which made that noise when any one tried to open it a difficult task with the new hasps to any one who did not understand them.
No hustle, no appearance of business save where a messenger-boy threaded the maze on a break-neck bicycle, or where a dull-faced coolie pulled at an overloaded barrow. Grey and brown, the crowd clattered by on their wooden shoes. Grey and black, passed the haikara young men with their yellow side-spring shoes.
Often one native would take a wheel, others would push from behind, some would lift one of the fore feet of the obstinate brutes, a few would take their heads, and then, after much alternate fondling and beating, off we would go at a very break-neck speed for perhaps a mile, when the horses would quiet down into an easy trot for the remainder of the stage.
All of our fellows below belonging to the port watch came tumbling up the hatchways in a jiffy on hearing the `assembly, clutching up their rifles and sword-bayonets from the arm-racks on the lower deck; while we of the starboard, who were already up from having the middle watch, proceeded at a break-neck pace to fetch ours.
Up the middle of the Road came, in a body, the entire juvenile population of Providence at a break-neck speed and farther down the street they were followed by Deacon Bostick, coming as fast as his feeble old legs would bring him. Eliza Pike headed the party with Teether hitched high up en her arm and Martin Luther clinging to her short blue calico skirt.
At length we came out upon Fleet Market, and traversing it, turned up a narrow street to the bottom of a long steep flight of stone steps, named Break-neck Stairs. These, he told me, led up to Green Arbour court, and that down them poor Goldsmith might many a time have risked his neck.
The apparition of a badly-scared teamster urging one of his wheel mules at break-neck speed over the rough ground, yelling for protection against "them Johnnies," who had appeared on some hilltop in sight of where he was gathering corn, was an almost hourly occurrence. Of course the squad dispatched to his assistance found nobody.
"Yes; there he was at last, running at a break-neck speed down the steep and rocky bank to the beach, while the doctor was distinctly seen high overhead on the regular path, coming very quickly too. Indeed, though he had taken the longest road, and did not seem to hasten like Alfred, he was only a few minutes behind him, and showed no signs of heat and over-exertion.
But there was no break-neck incline too steep for Steve Fraser to follow. Once Jed chanced upon Steve stripped for a bath beside the creek, and he understood the physical reason for his perfect poise. The wiry, sinuous muscles, packed compactly without obtrusion, played beneath the skin like those of a panther.
Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves in their hands.
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