The Iron Horse Part 20

The suggestion was eagerly acted on. A subscription was made on the spot, and in three minutes the sum of about ten pounds was thrust into John's huge dirty hand by the enthusiastic commercial traveller. But John firmly refused to take it.

"What's to be done with it, then?" demanded the traveller, "_I_ can't keep it, you know, and I'm not going to sit down here and spend half-an-hour in returning the money. If you don't take it John, I must fling it under the engine or into the furnace."

"Well," said the driver, after a moment's consideration, while he closed his hand on the money and thrust it into his breeches pocket, "I'll take it. It will help to replace the cart we smashed, if I can find the owner."

While this was going on near the engine, the robbers were being removed from their carriage to receive the due reward of their deeds. Three tall and strong-boned men had been on the platform for some time awaiting the arrival of the "Flying Dutchman." Swift though John Marrot's iron horse was, a swifter messenger had pa.s.sed on the line before him. The electric spark--and a fast volatile, free-and-easy, yet faithful spark it is--had been commissioned to do a little service that day. Half-an-hour after the train had left Clatterby a detective, wholly unconnected with our friend Sharp, had called and sent a message to London to have Thomson, Jenkins, and Smith apprehended, in consequence of their connexion with a case of fraud which had been traced to them. The three tall strong-boned men were there in virtue of this telegram. But, accustomed though these men were to surprising incidents, they had scarcely expected to find that the three culprits had added another to their many crimes, and that one of them had leaped out of the train and out of their clutches--in all probability out of the world altogether! Two of the strong men went off immediately in search of him, or his remains, while the other put proper manacles on Jenkins and Smith and carried them off in a cab.

Meanwhile Joe Turner saw that all the other pa.s.sengers were got carefully out of the train. He was particularly polite in his attentions, however, to the "late pa.s.senger!"

"You have forgot, ma'am," he said politely, "to give up your dog-ticket."

"Dog-ticket!" exclaimed the lady, blushing; "what do you mean? I have no dog-ticket."

"Not for the little poodle dog, ma'am, that you carry under your shawl?"

The lady blushed still deeper as she admitted that she had no ticket for the dog, but said that she was quite willing to pay for it.

This having been done, her curiosity got the better of her shame at having been "caught," and she asked--

"How did you know I had a dog with me, guard?"

"Ah, ma'am," replied Joe with a smile, "we've got a remarkably sharp-sighted police force on our line, besides the telegraph. We find the telegraph very useful, I a.s.sure you, at times. The gentlemen who were removed in handcuffs a few minutes ago were _also_ stopped in their little game by the telegraph, ma'am."

The guard turned away to attend to some one else, and the late pa.s.senger, blushing a still deeper scarlet to find that she was cla.s.sed with criminals, hurried away to reflect, it is to be hoped, on the fact that dishonesty has no variety in character--only in degree.

When the guard left the late pa.s.senger, he found that his a.s.sistance was required to get Mrs Durby and her belongings out of the railway carriage and into a cab.

The poor nurse was in a pitiable state of mind. A railway journey had always been to her a thing of horror. The reader may therefore form some conception of what it was to her to have been thus suddenly called away from quiet suburban life to undertake not only a railway journey, but to be shut up with a gang of would-be murderers and encounter a sort of accident in addition! By the time she had reached London she had become quite incapable of connected thought. Even the precious parcel, which at first had been an object of the deepest solicitude, was forgotten; and although she had hugged it to her breast not two minutes before, she suffered it to drop under the seat as she was led from the train to the cab.

"Drive to the Clarendon," said Captain Lee, as he and Gurwood followed the nurse into the cab; "we will take care of her," he added to Edwin, "till she is better able to take care of herself."

Mrs Durby gave vent to a hysterical sob of grat.i.tude.

Arrived at the Clarendon they alighted, the captain paid the fare, and the cab was dismissed. Just at that moment Mrs Durby became a temporary maniac. She shrieked, "Oh! my parcel!" and rushed towards the door.

The captain and waiter restrained her.

"It's in the cab!" she yelled with a fervour there was no resisting.

Edwin, comprehending the case, dashed down the steps and followed the cab; but he might as well have followed the proverbial needle in the haystack. Hundreds of cabs, carts, busses, and waggons were pa.s.sing the Clarendon. He a.s.saulted and stopped four wrong cabs, endured a deal of chaff, and finally returned to the hotel discomfited.

Thus suddenly was Mrs Durby bereft of her treasure and thrown into abject despair. While in this condition she partially unbosomed herself to Captain Lee, and, contrary to strict orders, revealed all she knew about the embarra.s.sments of Mrs Tipps, carefully concealing, however, the nature of the contents of her lost parcel, and the real object of her journey to London.

One more paragraph in regard to this eventful trip of the "Flying Dutchman" ere we have done with the subject.

Having finished his journey, John Marrot took his iron steed to the stable. Usually his day's work terminated at Clatterby; but, owing to the horse being in need of extra rest he had to stop in London that night. And no wonder that the _Lightning_ was sometimes fatigued, for even an ordinary express engine on the Grand National Trunk Railway was wont to run over 270 miles of ground in a day, at the rate of about forty-five miles an hour, and with a dead weight of 120 tons, more or less, at her tail. This she did regularly, with two "shed-days," or days of rest, in the week for cleansing and slight repairs. Such an engine was considered to do good service if it ran 250 days in the year.

But the engine of the "Flying Dutchman" was more highly favoured than other engines--probably on the ground of the principle taught by the proverb, "It is the pace that kills." Its regular run was 1,544 miles in the day, and a.s.suredly it stood in need of repose and refreshment quite as much as ordinary horses do. Its joints had become relaxed with severe labour, its bolts had been loosened, its rubbing surfaces, despite the oil poured so liberally on them by Will Garvie, had become heated. Some of them, unequally expanded, strained and twisted; its grate-bars and fire-box had become choked with "clinkers," and its tubes charged with c.o.ke.

John therefore ran it into the huge shed or stable prepared for the reception of twenty-four iron horses, and handed it over to a set of cleaners or grooms. These immediately set to work; they cleaned out its fire-box, sc.r.a.ped its grate-bars, tightened all its bolts and rivets, greased the moving parts, and thoroughly cleansed it, outside and in.

Thus washed, cooled down, and purified, it was left to repose for five or six hours preparatory to a renewal of its giant energies on the following day.

Although we have somewhat exalted our pet locomotive of the "Flying Dutchman," justice requires us to state that goods engines are more gigantic and powerful, though they are not required to run so fast.

These engines are the heavy dray-horses of the line, express engines being the racers. The latter can carry a _light_ _load_ of some seventy or ninety tons on a good roadway at the rate of fifty miles an hour or upwards. Goods engines of the most powerful cla.s.s, on the other hand, run at a much slower pace, but they drag with ease a load of from 300 to 350 tons, with which they can ascend steep gradients.

But whether light or heavy, strong or weak, all of them are subject to the same laws. Though powerfully, they are delicately framed, and like man himself, appear to be incapable of perfect action without obtaining at the least one day of rest in the week.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

TREATS OF MRS. DURBY'S LOST PARCEL IN PARTICULAR, AND OF LOST-LUGGAGE IN GENERAL.

We need scarcely say that Edwin Gurwood took a good deal of trouble to find poor Mrs Durby's lost parcel. Had he known what its contents were he might perhaps have done more. As she positively a.s.serted that she had carried it into the cab with her and had not left it in the train, immediate application was not made at the station for it, but Edwin drove her in a cab to Scotland Yard, and there introduced her to the police officials whose duty it is to take charge of articles left in cabs. Here she was asked to describe the appearance of her parcel, which she did, by saying that it was a roundish one in brown paper, fastened with a piece of string, and having the name of Durby written on it in pencil, without any address.

Not feeling quite sure however of the fidelity of the nurse's memory, Edwin then went to the station and made inquiries there, but on application to the lost-luggage office no such parcel had been deposited there. The reader may perhaps be surprised at this, as it is well-known that every train is searched by the porters on its arrival at a terminus, and all forgotten articles are conveyed at once to the lost-luggage office. In the ordinary course of things Mrs Durby's parcel would have been found and restored to her on application, but it happened that a careless porter searched the "Flying Dutchman" that day, and had failed to observe the parcel which lay in a dark corner under the seat. When the carriage therefore was shunted the parcel was left to repose in it all night as well as all next day, which happened to be Sunday.

The parcel had a longish excursion on its own account after that. The carriage in which it lay happened to be a "through one," and belonged to another company, to whose line it was accordingly forwarded on the following Monday. It reached a remote station in the west of England that night and there the parcel was discovered. It lay all night there, and next day was forwarded to the lost-luggage office of that line.

Here it was examined; the various pieces of paper were unrolled one by one and the doubled-up slipper was discovered; this was examined, and the little parcel found; the name of Durby having been noted and commented on, the covering of note-paper was removed, and the match-box revealed, from the inside of which was produced the pill-box, which, when opened, disclosed to the astonished gaze of the officials an antique gold ring set with diamonds! As the name "Mrs Durby" written in pencil did not furnish a clue to the owner, the ring was given into the charge of the custodier of the lost-luggage office, and a description of it with a note of all particulars regarding it, was forwarded to the Clearing-House in London.

The lost-luggage office, we may remark in pa.s.sing, was a wonderful place--a place in which a moralist might find much material for mental mastication. Here, on an extensive series of shelves, were deposited in large quant.i.ties the evidences of man's defective memory; the sad proofs of human fallibility. There were caps and comforters and travelling-bags in great abundance. There were shawls and rugs, and umbrellas and parasols, and sticks and hat-boxes in such numbers as to suggest the idea that hundreds of travellers, smitten with irresistible feelings of grat.i.tude, had left these articles as a trifling testimony of respect to the railway company. There were carpet-bags here not only in large numbers but in great variety of form and size.

Smelling-bottles, pocket-handkerchiefs, flasks, pocket-books, gun-cases, portmanteaux, books, cigar cases, etcetera, enough to have stocked a gigantic curiosity shop, and there were several articles which one could not account for having been forgotten on any other supposition than that the owners were travelling maniacs. One gentleman had left behind him a pair of leathern hunting-breeches, a soldier had forgotten his knapsack, a cripple his crutches! a Scotchman his bagpipes; but the most amazing case of all was a church door! We do not jest, reader. It is a fact that such an article was forgotten, or left or lost, on a railway, and, more amazing still, it was never claimed, but after having been advertised, and having lain in the lost goods office the appointed time, it was sold by auction with other things. Many of the articles were powerfully suggestive of definite ideas. One could not look upon those delicate kid gloves without thinking of the young bride, whose agitated soul was incapable of extending a thought to such trifles. That Mrs Gamp-like umbrella raised to mental vision, as if by magic, the despair of the stout elderly female who, arriving unexpectedly and all unprepared at her journey's end, sought to collect her scattered thoughts and belongings and launch herself out on the platform, in the firm belief that a minute's delay would insure her being carried to unknown regions far beyond her destination, and it was impossible to look at that fur travelling-cap with ear-pieces c.o.c.ked knowingly on a sable m.u.f.f, without thinking of the bland bald-headed old gentleman who had worn it during a night journey, and had pulled it in all ways about his head and over his eyes, and had crushed it into the cushions of his carriage in a vain endeavour to sleep, and had let it fall off and temporarily lost it and trod upon it and unintentionally sat upon it, and had finally, in the great hurry of waking suddenly on arrival, and in the intense joy of meeting with his blooming girls, flung it off, seized his hat and bag and rug, left the carriage in a whirlwind of greeting, forgot it altogether, and so lost it for ever.

"Nay, not lost," we hear some one saying; "he would surely call at the lost-luggage office on discovering his loss and regain his property."

Probably he might, but certainly he would only act like many hundreds of travellers if he were to leave his property there and never call for it at all.

True, much that finds its way to the lost-luggage office is reclaimed and restored, but it is a fact that the quant.i.ty never reclaimed is so large on almost any railway that it forms sufficient to warrant an annual sale by auction which realises some hundreds of pounds. One year's sale of lost-luggage on the Grand National Trunk Railway amounted to 500 pounds! and this was not more than an average year's sale. Every possible effort is of course made to restore lost-luggage before such a sale takes place. In the first place, everything bearing a name and address is returned at once to the owner, but of course there are mult.i.tudes of small articles which have neither name nor address. Such of these as are locked or tied up are suffered to remain for a short time in an office, where they may be readily reclaimed; but if not claimed soon they are opened, and if addresses are found inside are sent to their owners. In the event of no addresses being found they are retained for a year, then advertised for sale by public auction, and the proceeds go to reduce that large sum--perhaps 16,000 poundss or more-- which the company has to pay annually as compensation for lost and damaged goods. On one railway where the lost-luggage was allowed to lie a considerable time before being examined a singular case occurred. A hat-box was opened and found to contain Bank of England notes to the amount of 65 pounds, with two letters, which led to its being restored to its owner after having lain for more than a year. The owner had been so positive that he had left the hat-box at a hotel that he had made no inquiry for it at the railway office.

A sale-catalogue of left and unclaimed property on one of our chief railways, which now lies before us, presents some curious "lots." Here are some of them: 70 walking-sticks, 30 silk umbrellas, and there are eleven similar lots, besides innumerable parasols--50 m.u.f.fs and boas--a crate containing 140 billyc.o.c.ks and hats--24 looking-gla.s.ses--160 packets of cloth b.u.t.tons--15 frying-pans and 18 ploughshares--3 b.u.t.ter machines--2 gas-meters, 2 shovels, and a pair of spectacles--a box of sanitary powder and a 15-horse power horizontal steam-engine! How some of these things, especially the last, could come to be lost at all, is a mystery which we have been quite unable to fathom. Of these lots the catalogue contains 404, and the sale was to occupy two days.

After having failed to obtain any information as to the missing brown paper parcel, Mrs Durby felt so overwhelmed with distress and shame that she took the whole matter into serious consideration, and, resolving to forego her visit to her brother, returned straight to Clatterby, where, in a burst of tears, she related her misadventures to Netta. It need scarcely be said that Netta did not blame her old and faithful nurse. Her disposition was of that mild sympathetic nature which induces one,--when an accident occurs, such as the breaking of a valuable piece of china,--to hasten to excuse rather than to abuse the unhappy breaker, who, in nine cases out of ten, is far more severely punished by his or her own conscience than the sin deserves! Instead, therefore, of blaming the nurse, Netta soothed her; said that it did not matter _much_; that the ring was valuable to her only as a gift from her father; that no doubt some other means of paying their debts would soon be devised; that it would have been an absolute miracle, if nurse had retained her self-possession, in the terrible circ.u.mstances, in which she had been placed, and in fact tried so earnestly and touchingly to comfort her, that she unintentionally heaped coals of intensest fire on the poor woman's head, and caused Mrs Durby not only to blame herself more than ever, but to throw her arms round Netta's neck, and all but fall down on her knees and worship her.

Thereafter the subject was dismissed, and in a short time almost forgotten.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

DESCRIBES ENGINEERING DIFFICULTIES, A PERPLEXING CASE, AND A HARMONIOUS MEETING.

Captain Lee's object in visiting London was twofold. He went there primarily to attend the half-yearly general meeting of the Grand National Trunk Railway, and secondarily, to accompany his friend Edwin Gurwood to the Railway Clearing-House, in which establishment he had been fortunate enough to secure for him a situation.

The various circ.u.mstances which contributed to the bringing about of an intimacy between Captain Lee and young Gurwood are partly known to the reader. It was natural that the captain should feel some sort of regard for one who had twice shown himself so ready to spring to his a.s.sistance in the hour of danger; but that which weighed still more strongly with the old sailor--who had been a strict disciplinarian and loved a zealous man--was the energy, with which Edwin threw himself into the work of the department of the railway, in which he had first been placed. Perhaps if the captain had known the motives and the hopes which actuated the youth he might have regarded him with very different feelings! We know not--and it matters little now.

As a clerk in the Engineers' office, Edwin had, in a few weeks, evinced so much talent and apt.i.tude for the work as to fill his patron's heart with delight. He possessed that valuable quality which induces a man-- in Scripture language--to look not only on his own things but on the things of others. He was not satisfied with doing his own work thoroughly, but became so inquisitive as to the work of his companions in the office that he acquired in a short time as much knowledge as some of these companions had acquired in several years.

The engineer's department of a railway is one which involves some of the most important operations connected with the line. But indeed the same may be said of all the departments--pa.s.senger, goods, locomotive, and police, each of which is independent, yet connected. They are separate wheels, as it were, which work harmoniously together in one grand system, and the gentlemen at the head of these departments must be men of experience; of acknowledged talent and power, each supreme in his own department, but all subject to the general manager.

The engineer-in-chief, who was Edwin Gurwood's superior, had charge of the entire railway, which was something over one thousand miles in extent. This vast line was divided into four divisions--namely, the northern, southern, western, and eastern; each division being under the superintendence of a resident engineer, who was, of course, subject to the engineer-in-chief. Each division was about 250 miles long, and was subdivided into districts varying from thirty to seventy miles. These were under the charge of inspectors, whose duty it was to travel constantly over their lengths--almost daily--partly on foot and partly by train, to see that the line was kept in perfect working order. The travelling inspectors had under them a large body of "surface-men" or "plate-layers," men whose duty it was to perform the actual work of keeping the line in order. They worked in squads of four or five--each squad having a foreman or gaffer, who was held responsible for the particular small portion of the line that he and his squad had to attend to. The average number of surface-men was about two to the mile--so that the entire staff of these men on the line numbered over two thousand. Their business was to go over the entire line twice a day, drive tight the wooden "keys" which held the rails in their chairs, lift and re-lay broken or worn-out rails and chairs, raise or depress sleepers wherever these required alteration, so as to make the line level, and, generally, to keep in thorough repair the "permanent way."