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

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 passed 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 passengers were got carefully out of the train. He was particularly polite in his attentions, however, to the “late passenger!”

“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 assure 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 passenger, blushing a still deeper scarlet to find that she was classed 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 passenger, he found that his assistance 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 gratitude.

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 passing the Clarendon. He assaulted 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 embarrassments 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 assuredly 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 coke.

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, scraped 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 class, 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.