UNSUNG HEROES
Allan laboured savagely with the others. One thought sang in his
brain, keeping time to the steady rise and fall of the shovels: “The
track must be cleared; the track must be cleared.” The great pile of
coal before him took on a hideous and threatening personality—it was
a dragon, with its claws at the road’s throat. It must be
conquered—must be dragged away. From time to time he stopped a
moment to munch one of the sandwiches, not noticing the dirt and
coal-dust that settled upon it. He was not hungry, but he felt
instinctively that he must eat the food.
Most of the other men were chewing tobacco, their jaws working
convulsively in unison with their arms. They had long since ceased
to be human beings—they had become machines. Their movements were
precise, automatic, regular. Their faces grew gradually black and
blacker in the perpetual dust which arose from the coal; their eyes
became rimmed with black, and bloodshot under the constant
irritation of the dust. They breathed it in, swallowed it, absorbed
it. Their sense of smell and taste gradually left them—or, at least,
they could smell and taste only one thing, coal-dust. They ceased to
resemble men; one coming upon them unawares would have taken them
for some horrible group from Dante’s inferno, doing terrible penance
through eternity. They looked neither to the right nor left; their
eyes were always on the coal—on this shifting black monster with
which they were doing battle. Their hands seemed welded to the
shovels, which rose and fell, rose and fell.
The cold rain beat in sheets around them, soaking their clothes, and
yet they scarcely felt this added discomfort, so intent were they
upon the task before them. Most of them had thrown off their coats
at the beginning of the struggle, and now their wet shirts stuck
tightly to their skins, showing every muscle. Gradually, by almost
imperceptible degrees, the pile of coal on the banks of the cut grew
higher; gradually the pile on the track grew less, but so slowly
that it was agonizing.
Above them on the bank, the great locomotive, hurled there and
turned completely around by the force of the collision, stood a grim
sentinel. It was the one piece of luck, the officers told
themselves, in connection with this wreck, that the engine had been
tossed there out of the way. To have raised it from the track and
placed it there would have taken hours, and every minute was so
precious! It would take hours to get it down again, but that need
not be done until the track was clear.
Toward the middle of the morning, three fresh gangs of men came from
the east and fell to work beside the others. But the others did not
think of stopping. Instead, with staring eyes and tight-set teeth,
they worked a little harder, to keep pace with the freshness and
vigour of the newcomers. Ninety shovels were hurling the coal aside,
digging into it, eating it away. Here, there, and everywhere the
officials went, seeing that every stroke told, that not an ounce of
energy was wasted, taking a hand themselves, driving themselves as
hard as any of the men. Soon the coal was heaped so high along the
sides of the cut that a force was put to work throwing it farther
back. Almost all of it had to be handled twice!
Noon came—a dark noon without a sun; a noon marked by no hour of
rest for these toilers. Back in the wrecking-car a great boiler of
coffee steamed and bubbled; the cook carried pails of it among the
men, who paused only long enough to swallow a big dipperful. Even
Allan, who had no taste for it, drank deep and long, and he was
astonished at the flood of warm vigour it seemed to send through
him. Every half-hour this coffee was passed around, strong and black
and stimulating. It was a stimulation for which the men would pay
later on in limp reaction, but it did its work now.
Experience had proved that no other means was so good as this to
sustain men against fatigue, hour after hour, and to drive away
sleep from the brain. Time was when the railroad company had
experimented with other stimulants, but they had long since been
discarded.
Still the rain descended, and a biting wind from the north turned
the weather steadily colder and colder. A sheet of sleet formed over
the coal, welding it into a solid mass, which required the vigorous
use of picks to dislodge. The men slipped and stumbled, gasping with
exhaustion, but still the shovels rose and fell. Here and there, the
twisted and broken track began to appear.
At the side of the track the train-master called a lineman, who
carried a wire up a pole and attached it to one of the wires
overhead. A telegraph instrument was connected with this, and,
sitting down upon the bank, the train-master ticked in to
headquarters the news that the track would be clear at midnight, and
repaired six hours later.
In this, as in everything, the train-master knew his men. Ten
minutes before midnight the last shovelful of coal was out of the
way,—the track was clear,—one part of the battle had been won. But
another part yet remained to fight,—the track must be rebuilt, and
the work of doing it began without a moment’s delay. The twisted
rails and splintered ties were wrenched out of the way; the
road-bed, which had been ploughed up by the wheels of the derailed
cars, was hastily levelled. From the wrecking-car gangs of men
staggered under new ties and rails, which were piled along beside
the track where they would be needed.
At last the road-bed was fairly level again, and ties were laid with
feverish energy by the light of the flaring torches, which gave the
scene a weirdness which it had lacked by day. Phantoms of men moved
back and forth, now disappearing in the darkness, now leaping into
view again, working doggedly on, to their very last ounce of
strength and endurance.
As the ties were got into place, the rails were spiked down upon
them and fish-plates were bolted into place. Rod after rod they
advanced, tugging, hammering, with the energy of desperation. It was
no question now of a perfect road-bed—rail must be joined to rail so
that once more the red blood of commerce could be pumped along the
artery they formed. After that there would be time for the fine
points. And just as the sun peeped over the eastern hills, the last
spike was driven, the last bolt tightened. The work was done.
The men cheered wildly, savagely, their voices hoarse and unnatural.
Then they gathered up their tools, staggered to the car, and fell
exhausted on bunk or chair or floor, and went instantly to sleep.
Allan found afterward that he had no memory whatever of those last
trying hours.
At the side of the road the train-master was ticking off a message
which told that his promise was kept,—a message which sent a thrill
of life along the line from end to end,—which told that the road was
clear. Then he cut loose his instrument, and he and the
superintendent walked back to the car together. They were no longer
the trim, good-looking men of every day—they were haggard, gaunt,
unshaven. Their eyes were bloodshot, their clothing soiled and torn.
They had not spared themselves. For thirty-six hours they had been
working without so much as lifting their hats from their heads. But
they had won the battle—as they had won many others like it, though
few quite so desperate.
On either side the track was piled a mass of twisted wreckage; the
engine still lay high on the bank. That could wait. Another crew
could haul the engine down and gather up the débris, for the track
was open.
The journey back took longer than the journey out. At every siding
they headed in to let passenger and freight whirl past; the blood
was bounding now, trying to make up for the time it had been
stopped. But the men lying in the car saw none of them; the roar of
their passage did not awaken them—they knew not whether the trip
back took two hours or ten—they were deaf, blind, dead with fatigue.
Only at the journey’s end were they awakened, and it was no easy
task. But at last they had all arisen, gaunt shadows of their former
selves.
“Boys,” said the superintendent, “I want to tell you that I’ve never
seen a wreck handled as well as you handled this one. You did great
work, and I’m proud of you. Now go home and go to sleep,—sleep
twenty-four hours if you can. Don’t report for duty till to-morrow.
And I promise you I won’t forget this night’s work.”
They staggered away through the curious crowd at the station, seeing
nothing, turning instinctively in the direction of their homes.
“Why,” remarked one white-haired man, gazing after them, “they look
just as we looked after we got through the Wilderness. They look
like they’ve been under fire for a week.”
The superintendent, passing, heard the remark.
“They have,” he answered, dryly. “They’ve been under the heaviest
kind of fire continuously for thirty-six hours. You fellows have had
whole libraries written about you, and about a thousand monuments
built to you. You get a pension while you live, and your grave is
decorated when you die. I’m not saying you don’t deserve it all, for
I believe you do. But there’s some other people in the world who
deserve honour and glory, too,—section-men, for instance. I never
heard of anybody building a monument to them, or calling them
heroes; and, if there are any flowers on their graves, it’s their
families put them there!”
He passed on, while his auditor stared open-mouthed, not knowing
whether to be moved or angry. The superintendent’s nerves were
shaken somewhat, or he might have spoken less bitterly; but a sudden
sharp sense of the world’s injustice had clamoured for utterance.
And the wrecking-train was run in again on the siding, ready for the
next trip.
The men, of course, paid the penalty for their almost superhuman
exertions. No men could work as they had done and not feel the
after-effects in diminished vitality. The younger ones among them
soon recovered, for youth has a wonderful power of recuperation; the
older ones were a little more bent, a little more gnarled and
withered, a little nearer the end of the journey. They had
sacrificed themselves on the altar of the great system which they
served; they had done so without a murmur, with no thought of
shirking or holding back. They would do so again without an
instant’s hesitation whenever duty called them. For that was their
life-work, to which they were dedicated with a simple, unquestioning
devotion. There was something touching about it,—something grand and
noble, too,—just as there is in a man dedicating himself to any
work, whether to conquer the world with Napoleon, or to keep clean a
stretch of street pavement committed to his care. It was this
dedication, this singleness of purpose—this serfdom to the
road—which Allan grew to understand more and more deeply, and to
glory in.
And it was not an unworthy service, for the road was worth devotion.
Not the company of capitalists, who sat in an office somewhere in
the East and manipulated its stocks and bonds, but the road
itself,—this thing of steel and oak which had rendered possible the
development of the country, which had added fabulously to its
wealth, which bound together its widely separated States into one
indivisible Union. They were servants of the force which, more than
any other, has made our modern civilization possible.
Let me add that the story of this wreck is no imaginary one. It is a
true story which actually occurred just as it is set down here; it
is an experience which repeats itself over and over again in the
life of every railroad man; it was a battle which, in one form or
another, railroad men are always fighting, and always winning. And,
more than most battles, is it worth winning!