The Iron Horse by R. M. Ballantyne (best novel books to read txt) 📕

Mr Sharp had several peculiarities, which, at first sight, might have puzzled a stranger. He was peculiar in his choice of routes by which to reach a given spot appearing frequently to prefer devious, difficult, and unfrequented paths to straight and easy roads. In the time of his visits to various places, too, he was peculiarly irregular, and seemed rather to enjoy taking people by surprise.

On the present occasion his chief peculiarity appeared to be a desire to approach the station by a round-about road. In carrying out his plans he went round the corner of a house, from which point of view he observed a goods train standing near a goods-shed with an engine attached. In order to reach it he had the choice of two routes. One of these was through a little wicket-gate, near to which a night-watchman was stationed—for the shades of evening were by that time descending on the scene, the other was through a back yard, round by a narrow lane and over a paling, which it required more than an average measure of strength and agility to leap. Mr Sharp chose the latter route. What were palings and narrow lanes and insecure footing in deepening gloom to him! Why, he rejoiced in such conditions! He didn’t like easy work. He abhorred a bed of roses—not that he had ever tried one, although it is probable that he had often enjoyed a couch of grass, straw, or nettles. Rugged circumstances were his glory. It was as needful for him to encounter such—in his winnowing processes—as it is for the harrow to encounter stones in preparing the cultivated field. Moving quietly but swiftly round by the route before mentioned Mr Sharp came suddenly on the night-watchman.

“Good-evening, Jim.”

“Evenin’, sir.”

“Keep your eyes open to-night, Jim. We must find out who it is that has taken such a fancy to apples of late.”

“I will, sir; I’ll keep a sharp look-out.”

It was Jim’s duty to watch that locality of the line, where large quantities of goods of all descriptions were unavoidably left to wait for a few hours on sidings. Such watchmen are numerous on all lines; and very necessary, as well as valuable, men most of them are—fellows who hold the idea of going to rest at regular hours in quiet contempt; men who sleep at any time of the night or day that chances to be most convenient, and who think no more of a hand-to-hand scuffle with a big thief or a burglar than they do of eating supper. Nevertheless, like every other class of men in this wicked world, there are black sheep amongst them too.

“Is that train going up to the station just now, Jim?” asked Mr Sharp, pointing to the engine, whose gentle simmering told of latent energy ready for immediate use.

“I believe so, sir.”

“I’ll go up with her. Good-night.”

Mr Sharp crossed the line, and going towards the engine found that the driver and fireman were not upon it. He knew, however, that they could not be far off—probably looking after something connected with their train—and that they would be back immediately; he climbed up to the foot-plate and sat down on the rail. He there became reflective, and recalled, with some degree of amusement as well as satisfaction, some of the more recent incidents of his vocation. He smiled as he remembered how, not very far from where he sat, he had on a cloudy evening got into a horse-box, and boring a hole in it with a gimlet, applied his eye thereto,—his satellite David Blunt doing the same in another end of the same horse-box, and how, having thus obtained a clear view of a truck in which several casks of wine were placed, he beheld one of the servants on the line in company with one of his friends who was not a servant on the line, coolly bore a hole in one of the wine casks and insert a straw, and, by that means, obtain a prolonged and evidently satisfactory draught—which accounted at once for the fact that wine had been leaking in that locality for some time past, and that the said servant had been seen more than once in a condition that was deemed suspicious.

Mr Sharp also reflected complacently—and he had time to reflect, for the driver and fireman were rather long of coming—on another case in which the thieves were so wary that for a long time he could make nothing of them, although their depredations were confined to a train that passed along the line at a certain hour, but at last were caught in consequence of his hitting on a plan of having a van specially prepared for himself. He smiled again—almost laughed when he thought of this van—how it was regularly locked and labelled on a quiet siding; how a plank was loosened in the bottom of it, by which means he got into it, and was then shunted out, and attached to the train, so that neither guard, nor driver, nor fireman, had any idea of what was inside; how he thereafter bored several small gimlet holes in the various sides of the van and kept a sharp look-out from station to station as they went along; how at last he came to the particular place—not a station, but a place where a short pause was made—where the wary thieves were; how he saw them—two stout fellows—approach in the gloom of evening and begin their wicked work of cutting tarpaulings and abstracting goods; how he thereupon lifted his plank and dropped out on the line, and how he powerfully astonished them by laying his hands on their collars and taking them both in the very act!

At last Mr Sharp’s entertaining reflections were interrupted by the approach of the driver of the engine, who carried a top-coat over his left arm.

As he drew near and observed who stood upon his engine, the man gave an involuntary and scarcely perceptible start.

There must have been something peculiarly savage and ungenerous in the breast of Mr Sharp, one would have thought, to induce him to suspect a man whose character was blameless. But he did suspect that man on the faith of that almost imperceptible touch of discomposure, and his suspicion did not dissipate although the man came boldly and respectfully forward.

“Ho-ho!” thought Mr Sharp, “there is more chaff here to be winnowed than I had bargained for.” His only remark, however, was—

“Good-evening; I suppose you start for the station in a few minutes?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, moving towards the rear of the tender.

“You’d better get up at once, then,” said Mr Sharp, descending quickly—“what have you got there, my good man?”

“My top-coat sir,” said the driver, with a confused look.

“Ah, let us see—eh! what’s all this? A salmon! a brace of grouse! and a pair of rabbits! Well, you seem to have provided a good supper for to-night. There don’t appear to be very stringent game-laws where you come from!”

The man was so taken aback that he could not reply. As the fireman came out of the neighbouring goods-shed at that moment, Mr Sharp ordered the driver to mount to his place, and then waiting beside the engine received the fireman with an amiable “Good-night.”

This man also had a top-coat over his arm, betrayed the same uneasiness on observing Mr Sharp, went though precisely the same examination, and was found to have made an identically similar provision for his supper.

Almost immediately after him the guard issued from the shed, also burdened with a top-coat! Mr Sharp muttered something about, “birds of a feather,” and was about to advance to meet the guard when that individual’s eyes fell on him. He turned back at once, not in a hurry, but quietly as though he had forgotten something. The superintendent sprang through the open door, but was too late. The guard had managed to drop his booty. Thereupon Mr Sharp returned to the engine, ordered the steam to be turned on, and the driver drove himself and his friends to the station and to condign punishment.

Having disposed of this little incidental case, Mr Sharp—after hearing and commenting upon several matters related to him by the members of his corps, and having ordered David Blunt to await him in the office as he had a job for him that night,—returned towards the locality which he had so recently quitted. In doing this he took advantage of another goods train, from which