There is among the remembrances of my life as a railroad man, one of
such sadness, that I never think of it without a sigh. Every man,
unless he be so morose that he cannot keep a dog, has his particular
friends; those in whom he confides, and to whom he is always cheerful;
whose society he delights in, and the possibility of whose death, he
will never allow himself to admit.
Such a friend had I in George H----. We were inseparable--both of
us unmarried; we would always manage to board together, and on all
possible occasions to be together. Did George's engine lay up for the
Sunday at one end of the road, and mine at the other, one of us was
sure to go over the road "extra," in order that we might be together.
George and I differed in many respects, but more especially in this,
that whereas I was one of the "fast" school of runners, who are never
so contented with running as when mounted on a fast engine, with an
express train, and it behind time. George preferred a slow train,
where, as he said, his occupation was "killing time," not "making" it.
So while I had the "Baltic," a fast engine, with drivers six feet and
a half in diameter, and usually ran express trains, George had the
"Essex," a freight engine, with four feet drivers.
One Saturday night I took the last run north, and was to "lay over"
with my engine for the Sunday at the northern terminus of the road,
until two o'clock Monday P. M. George had to run the "Night Freight"
down that night, and as we wished particularly to be together the
next day, I concluded to go "down the line" with him. Starting time
came, and off we started. I rode for awhile in the "caboose," as the
passenger car attached to a freight train is called, but as the night
was warm and balmy, the moon shining brightly, tinging with silvery
white the great fleecy clouds that swept through the heaven, like
monstrous floating islands of snow drifting over the fathomless waters
of the sea, I went out and rode with George on the engine. The night
was indeed most beautiful, the moonlight shimmering across the river,
which the wind disturbed and broke into many ripples, made it to glow
and shine like a sea of molten silver. The trees beside the track
waved and beckoned their leafy tops, looking sombre and weird in the
half-darkness of the night. The vessels we saw upon the river, gliding
before the freshening breeze, with their signal lights glimmering
dimly, and the occasional steamers with light streaming from every
window, and the red light of their fires casting an unearthly glare
upon the waters; these all combined to make the scene spread before us,
as we rushed shrieking and howling over the road, one of unexcelled
beauty. We both gazed at it, and said that if all scenes in the life of
a railroad man were as beautiful as this we would wish no other life.
But something ailed George's engine. Her pumps would not work. After
tinkering with them awhile, he asked the fireman if there was plenty of
water in the tank; the fireman said there was, but to make assurance
doubly sure I went and looked, and lo! there was not a drop! Before
passing through the station George had asked the fireman if there was
plenty of water. He replied that there was; so George had run through
the station, it not being a regular stopping place for the train, and
here we were in a fix. George thought he could run from where we had
stopped to the next water station; so he cut loose from the train and
started. We had stopped on the outside of a long curve, to the other
end of which we could see; it was fully a half mile, but the view was
straight across the water--a bay of the river sweeping in there, around
which the track went.
In about twenty minutes after George had left we saw him coming around
the farthest point of the curve; the brakeman at once took his station
with his light at the end of the cars, to show George precisely where
the train stood. The engine came swiftly towards us, and I soon saw he
was getting so near that he could not stop without a collision, unless
he reversed his engine at once; so I snatched the lamp from out the
brakeman's hands, and swung it wildly across the track, but it was of
no avail. On came the engine, not slackening her speed the least. We
saw somebody jump from the fireman's side, and in the instant of time
allowed us, we looked to see George jump, but no! he stuck to his post,
and there came a shock as of a mountain falling. The heavy freight
engine running, as it was, at as high a rate of speed as it could
make, crashed into the train; thirteen cars were piled into a mass of
ruins, the like of which is seldom seen. The tender was turned bottom
side up, with the engine lying atop of it, on its side. The escaping
steam shrieked and howled; the water, pouring in on to the fire,
crackled and hissed; the stock (sheep and cattle) that were in the
cars bellowed and bleated in their agony, and it seemed as if all the
legions of hell were there striving to make a pandemonium of that quiet
place by the river-side. As soon as we recovered from the shock and got
used to the din which at first struck terror to our hearts--and I think
no sound can be more terrible than the bellowing of a lot of cattle
that are crushed in a railroad smash-up--we went to work to see if
George was alive, and to get him out, dead or alive. We found him under
the tender, but one side of the tank lay across his body, so that he
could not move. We got rails and lifted and pried, until we raised the
tender and got him out. We took one of the doors from the wrecked cars,
laid it beside the track, and made a bed on it with our coats and the
cushions from the caboose; for poor George said he wanted to pass the
few moments left him of earth beneath the open sky, and with the cool
breeze to fan his cheek. Of course we dispatched a man to the nearest
station for aid, and to telegraph from there for an engine; but it was
late at night, everybody was asleep, and it was more than three hours
before any one arrived, and all that time George lingered, occasionally
whispering a word to me as I bent over him and moistened his lips.
He told me while lying there the reason why he did not stop sooner.
Something had got loose on the inside throttle gearing, and he could
not shut off steam, nor, owing to some unaccountable complicity of
evil, could he reverse his engine. So on he had to come, pell-mell, and
both of them were killed; for the fireman had jumped on some rocks, and
must have died instantly, as he was most horribly mangled.
The night wind moaned through the wreck, the dripping water yet hissed
upon the still hot iron of the engine, the waves of the river gurgled
and rippled among the rocks of the shore, and an occasional bellow
of agony was heard from amidst the cattle cars, where all the rest
of the hands were at work releasing the poor creatures; but I sat
there, in sad and solemn silence, waiting for him to die that had been
as a brother to me. At last, just as we heard the whistle of the
approaching engine, and just as the rising sun had begun to gild and
bespangle the purpling east, George opened his eyes, gave my hand a
faint grasp, and was no more. I stood alone with the dead man I had
loved so in life, but from whom death had now separated me.