Harper's Round Table, October 22, 1895 Part 2

Many boys and girls have seen the famous actor Joe Jefferson in his great play _Rip Van Winkle_, that delightful story of the Catskill fairies, and in it that weird scene where he partakes of the spirits that the elves give him, making him sleep for twenty years. Well, there is a good story told about Jefferson in that particular scene. Once being near some good fishing-grounds, he spent the day drawing in the gamy trout, and was thoroughly tired when the curtain rolled up for the evening performance. Things moved smoothly enough until he is supposed to fall asleep. Now that sleep in fiction lasts twenty years, but on the stage about two minutes. This time, however, the two minutes were lengthened out into ten, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the audience and provocation of the stage-manager. Jefferson had really fallen asleep, and his snores, it is said, were quite audible beyond the footlight.

Several remarks were fired at him by the audience, and, finally, the stage-manager had to go beneath the stage and open a trap near where Jefferson was lying to try and wake him up.

He called and called, but it was no use, and in desperation he succeeded in jabbing a pin into him, which made Jefferson jump up with a sharp cry, and quickly realize where he was.

"A PIECE OF WORK."

BY JAMES BARNES.

The train-despatcher's window at the Jimtown crossing commanded a good view of the yards. It was a wet night, with a penetrating drizzle so fine that it almost led one to believe that the earth was steaming from the heat of the forenoon. The ray of light that shot over the train-despatcher's shoulder as he looked out into the darkness showed, however, that it was rain drifting downwards in the minutest drops.

It was almost time for the night despatcher, Rollins, to put in an appearance, and Mr. Mingle looked at his watch and drummed with his fingers on the pane of gla.s.s.

The light of the switchmen's lanterns occasionally gleamed from the shining slippery rails. A noisy little engine that had been drilling freight cars about the yard stopped on the siding just beneath the window, and commenced to roar angrily with a burst of feathery vapor.

The despatcher watched the fireman open the door of the furnace and stand for an instant silhouetted against the red glare that was reflected by the dampness all around. Suddenly as he glanced up he saw a man on the top of a freight car across the yards swing his lantern about his head and make a jump clear to the ground into a pile of cinders.

"That was a foolish thing to do," said Mr. Mingle to himself. "He might have broken his legs; then he'd have sued the company."

The man was not injured, however, for he skipped across the tracks and approached the tower-house on a run. He stopped and shouted to the fireman of the engine that was raising such a row beneath the window.

The glow from the rosy coals made everything quite plain.

Never in his life had Mr. Mingle seen a face wear such a look as that.

The fireman closed the furnace door with a slam, and the engineer, who had been out on the foot-board, hurried back at a gesture. Two words, and he dropped the bundle of waste in his hand and pulled wide the throttle. At the same time the engine shrieked for open switches. What could it mean? As the despatcher turned to the door of the staircase, he ran into the man whose face he had seen in the glare from the fire-box.

It was the a.s.sistant yard-master.

"Lord, Mr. Mingle!" he exclaimed, "is No. 44 on time? Hurry and find out! Has she pa.s.sed the junction yet?"

The despatcher in one stride stepped to the instrument on the desk. With his fingers on the key-board, he paused. "Tell me, quickly," he said, "what has happened. Talk, man!"

"The ore train!" exclaimed the yard-master, sinking back into the worn arm-chair and dropping his hands helplessly to either side of him. "Some one left the switch open, and the brakes slipped or something. She pulled out by herself down the grade on the main track. I saw her going from the top of the freight. How she started, Lord knows. She slipped out like a ghost, sir."

Mr. Mingle had caught only the first few words. His nervous hand was jumping as he sounded the call for the operator at Selina Junction, twenty-five miles down the road. At last he stopped, and suddenly switched off for the return.

"Tick! Tick! Tick-a-tick!" the answer came; the yard-master watched the despatcher's face as a condemned man might look at the face of a judge--and Mr. Mingle had grown paler.

"Forty-four has just pa.s.sed the junction," he said, in a high strained voice. Then his teeth chattered as if he had felt a blast of icy wind.

There was nothing to do.

Fifteen of that twenty-five miles was all down grade on a single track--a bad grade that necessitated an extra engine to help its brother puff and tug the heavy trains up out of the valley. Between Jimtown and the junction there was no station, and only one siding that ran out to the Fetterolf quarries, ten miles below.

"The switch engine has gone after her," said the yard-master. "If she can catch up before they reach the steep grade near the pine woods they may be able to make a flying couple."

"She will never catch them now," said Mr. Mingle. "Heaven help all in 44!" A great sob like a shiver shook him. "Quick, hurry, Tomes!" he said, shaking the yard-master violently. "Make up a wrecking train, and send one of the boys to gather all the doctors. There are three of them up near the hotel. I'll telegraph headquarters. They will be safe for twenty minutes yet. Hurry, man. Don't sit there like a fool!"

The yard-master slipped his hat on his head and plunged down the steep stairway.

The despatcher rubbed his forehead.

It was a hard thing to do! Sixty miles away they would know of the accident before it occurred, simply by his touching the little instrument that his trembling hand reached forward for. How could he begin the message? The idea of that load of ore gathering frightful headway every minute, whirling along through the darkness toward that slowly approaching train, made him sick and faint. There was going to be a wreck, and nothing in the whole world could stop it. In his mind's eye he could see the crash. He could see what that fireman and engineer of 44 would see through the rain-drops in the glare from the head-light.

Old Jack Lane, he knew him well. It would be Jack's last trip. There would not be time to think; no time to press the throttle. It would be on them all at once.

The despatcher called up headquarters. Would they never answer? It seemed already half an hour since the yard-master had left him.

Somebody thumped up the stairway.

"h.e.l.lo, Mixer!" said a cheerful voice. "Fine night for ducks, eh?" The speaker, a young man with a slight athletic frame, dashed his hat on the table. "What's up, cully?" he asked; as Mr. Mingle turned from the instrument, and the other caught a glimpse of his scared white face.

Mr. Mingle's voice was hoa.r.s.e, as if he had been shouting, but he spoke slowly and distinctly. The young man he had been addressing had thrown off his rubber coat. The tails had been pinned up, and his back was covered with a streak of mud. When the despatcher had finished, his companion reached the head of the stairs in a jump.

"I'll try for it!" he said. "There's just one chance. I'll try to make the quarries!"

Despite the fact that headquarters was now calling back, Mingle ran to the door. He was just in time to see the night despatcher lifting something down the steps outside.

"Try for it, Rollie!" he shouted, and ran out into the rain. As he stood there he caught a glimpse of a figure fast leaving the yards. It was a man bent low over the handle-bars of a bicycle, his feet rising and falling with the quickness and ease of the trained racer. Mingle caught a flash of the steel spokes as the night despatcher turned the corner under the lamp-post into the road. Then he pulled himself up the stairs as if his feet were made of lead, and telegraphed the message to headquarters as slowly as if he had been a beginner, and not one of the best operators on the line.

The road that led outside of Jimtown stretched along through a bit of woods, and then plunged down the side of the mountain so steeply that loaded teams would halt every hundred feet or so to rest in the ascent.

A year before Rollins had coasted down c.o.o.n Hill, on a wager, but that was in broad daylight, with his club-mates stationed at every curve, and the roadway was cleared for him as far as the sandy stretch before the railroad crossing. Every stone had been picked out, and the water-bars evened up at the left-hand side. At one place, he remembered, his speed had been reckoned, in a measured one hundred yards, at forty miles an hour.

The railroad, to avoid the grade, followed the course of the Coponie, and circled about to the northward. Rollins had only to ride four miles to the ore-cars eleven--but such a night for coasting!

The rain made it hard for him to follow the little circle of light that his lantern threw before him as he scorched along the level stretch.

Before he reached the hill-top it seemed to him that he was standing still, and the road coming up at him like the surface of a great wheel.

At last, he felt that he had reached down-grade. How he longed now for the brake that he had so disdained! He determined to keep his feet going as long as he safely could, and he back-pedalled gently to keep them in place.

Thud! he struck the first water-bar, and his cap came forward over his eyes. He threw it off with a backward toss of his head.

Another jolt! He was too much in the middle of the road. He must keep more to the left. He was flying now. The rain poured down his face and stung him in a thousand p.r.i.c.kling points.

The wind roared frightfully in his ears, and he straightened up as far as his crooked racing-handles would allow. He was at the first turn. He swirled about it, and his feet came off the ratchets. He lifted up his knees, and placed his legs on the rests. He was riding a runaway.

"Hard to the left!" he kept saying to himself, with his arms braced straight like iron rods. The front wheel wriggled, and he knew he had struck the bit of sandy road above the second angle, and the worst. It warned him just in time. He remembered the huge rock with the advertis.e.m.e.nts on it, and a ray from the lantern caught it as he flashed by and then swooped off to the right. A sharp jingle as a stone flew up against the spokes; he was once more in the straight shoot for the last turn of all.

With wide-staring eyes he prayed; his tongue formed the words behind his closely shut teeth. "Bear to the left now!" He knew the path was better on that side.

Again the front wheel wriggled fiercely. It was by nothing but luck this time that he had chosen the right moment. There was a hollow thump as he crossed a wooden culvert and bounded for a moment clear into the air.

The greatest danger was pa.s.sed. Below him stretched a straight decline, and then the sandy patch before he reached the crossing.

How could he stop? He could never catch those flying pedals. But stop he must or he would overshoot his mark a half-mile before he found the level.