The modest estimate which Mrs Bones had formed of her penmanship turned
out to be erroneous, and her opinion that there was not a man in the
Post-Office able to read it was ill-founded. She was evidently ignorant
of the powers and intelligence of the Blind Division.
To make this more plain we will follow the letter. You and I, reader,
will post ourselves, as it were, and pass through the General
Post-Office unstamped. At a few minutes to six p.m. the mouth is wide
enough to admit us bodily. Mr Bones has just put in his epistle and
walked away with the air of a man who feels that he has committed
himself, and is "in for it." He might have posted it at an office or a
pillar nearer home, but he has an idea, founded no doubt on experience,
that people, especially policemen, are apt to watch his movements and
prefers a longish walk to the General.
There! we take a header and descend with the cataract into the basket.
On emerging in the great sorting-room, somehow, we catch sight of the
Bones epistle at once. There is no mistaking it. We should know its
dirty appearance and awry folding--not to mention bad writing--among ten
thousand. Having been turned with its stamp in the right direction at
the facing-tables and passed under the stamping-machines without notice,
it comes at last to one of the sorters, and effectually, though briefly,
stops him. His rapid distributive hand comes to a dead pause. He looks
hard at the letter, frowns, turns it upside down, turns his head a
little on one side, can make nothing of it, puts it on one side, and
continues his work.
But at the Blind Division, to which it is speedily conveyed, our letter
proves a mere trifle. It is nothing to the hieroglyphics which
sometimes come under the observation of the blind officers. One of
these officers gazes at it shrewdly for a few seconds. "William Stiggs,
I think," he says, appealing to a comrade. "Yes," replies the comrade,
"number six little lady--no--aly--oh, Little Alley, Bring--Bringing--ah,
Birmingham!"
Just so--the thing is made out almost as quickly as though it had been
written in copperplate, and the letter, redirected in red ink, finds its
way into the Birmingham mail-bag.
So far so good, but there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, and
other elements were more successful than bad writing in preventing Mr
William Stiggs from receiving that letter.
When the mail-bag containing it was put into the Travelling Post-Office
van, Mr Bright passed in after it. Our energetic sorter was in charge
of the van that night, and went to work at once. The letters to be
dropped at the early stages of the journey had to be commenced even
before the starting of the train. The letter did not turn up at first.
The officials, of whom there were six in the van, had littered their
sorting-table and arranged many of the letters, and the limited mail was
flying north at full speed before the Bones epistle found its
appropriate pigeon-hole--for it must be understood that the vans of the
Travelling Post-Office--the T.P.O., as it is familiarly called by its
friends--are fitted up on one side with a long narrow table, above which
are numerous pigeon-holes, arranged somewhat like those of the
sorting-tables in the non-travelling Post-Offices. There is a
suggestive difference, however, in the former. Their edges are padded
to prevent the sorters' knuckles and noses from being damaged in the
event of violent jolting. The sides and ends of the vans are padded all
round to minimise their injuries in the event of an accident. Beyond
this padding, however, there are no luxuries--no couches or chairs; only
a few things like bicycle saddles attached to the tables, astride which
the sorters sit in front of their respective pigeon-holes. On the other
side of the van are the pegs on which to hang the mail-bags, a lamp and
wax for sealing the same, and the apparatus for lowering and lifting the
net which catches the bags.
Everything connected with railways must needs be uncommonly strong, as
the weight of materials, coupled with high speed, subjects all the parts
of a carriage to extremely violent shocks. Hence the bag-catching
affair is a powerful iron frame with rope netting, the moving of which,
although aided by a pulley and heavy weight, tries the strength of a
strong man.
Nimbly worked the sorters, as they swept by town and field, village,
tunnel, bridge, and meadow,--for time may not be wasted when space
between towns is being diminished at the rate of forty or fifty miles an
hour, and chaos has to be reduced to order. The registered-letter clerk
sat in one corner in front of a set of special pigeon-holes, with a
sliding cover, which could be pulled over all like a blind and locked if
the clerk should have occasion to quit his post for a moment. While
some were sorting, others were bagging and sealing the letters.
Presently the junior sorter, whose special duty it is to manipulate the
net, became aware that a bag-exchanging station drew near. His eyes
might have assured him of this, but officers of the Travelling
Post-Office become so expert with their ears as to know stations by the
peculiarity of the respective sounds connected with them--caused, it
might be, by the noise of tunnels, cuttings, bridges, or even slighter
influences.
Going quietly to the apparatus above referred to, the junior sorter
looked out at the window and lowered the net, which, instead of lying
flat against the van, now projected upwards of three feet from it. As
he did so something flashed about his feet. He leaped aside and gave a
shout. Fearful live creatures were sometimes sent by post, he knew, and
serpents had been known before that to take an airing in Post-Office
vans as well as in the great sorting-room of St. Martin's-le-Grand! A
snake had only a short time before been observed at large on the floor
of one of the night mail sorting carriages on the London and
North-Western Railway, which, after a good deal of confusion and
interruption to the work, was killed. This flashed into his mind, but
the moment was critical, and the junior sorter had no time to indulge in
private little weaknesses. Duty required prompt action.
About a hundred yards from the approaching station, a mail-bag hung
suspended from a massive wooden frame. The bag weighed nearly eighty
pounds. It was fitted so exactly in its place, with reference to the
approaching train, that its neck was caught to a nicety in a fork, which
swept it with extreme violence off its hook, and laid it in the net.
This process, reversed, had been at the same moment performed on the bag
given out by the train. To prevent the receiving and delivering
apparatus from causing mutual destruction in passing each other, the
former is affixed to the upper, the latter to the lower, part of the
van. There was a rather severe jerk. The junior sorter exerted his
powers, raised the net, and hauled in the bag, while the train with
undiminished speed went thundering on.
"What was that I saw on the floor?" asked the junior sorter, looking
anxiously round as he set the mail-bags down.
"Only two white mice," replied Bright, who was busy in front of his
pigeon-holes. "They nibbled themselves out of a parcel under my very
nose. I made a grab at 'em, but they were too quick for me."
"Isn't it strange," observed the registered-letter clerk, sealing one of
the bags which had just been made up, "that people _will_ break the law
by sending live animals through the post?"
"More strange, it seems to me," returned Bright, as he tied up a bundle
of letters, "that the people who do it can't pack 'em properly."
"There's the next station," said the junior sorter, proceeding once more
to the net.
"Whew!" shrieked the steam-whistle, as the train went crashing towards
the station. Bright looked out. The frame and its mail-bags were all
right and ready. The net was lowered. Another moment and the mail-bags
were swept into the van, while the out-going bags were swept off the
projecting arm into the fixed net of the station. The train went
through the station with a shriek and a roar. There was a bridge just
beyond. The junior sorter forgot to haul up the net, which caught some
object close to the bridge--no one knew what or how. No one ever does
on such occasions! The result was that the whole apparatus was
demolished; the side of the van was torn out, and Mr Bright and the
junior sorter, who were leaning against it at the time, were sent, in a
shower of woodwork, burst bags, and letters, into the air. The rest of
the van did not leave the rails, and the train shot out of sight in a
few seconds, like a giant war-rocket, leaving wreck and ruin behind!
There are many miraculous escapes in this world. Mr Bright and the
junior sorter illustrated this truth by rising unhurt from the debris of
their recent labours, and began sadly to collect the scattered mails.
These however were not, like their guardians, undamaged. There were
several fatal cases, and among these was the Bones epistle. That
important document had been caught by a mass of timber and buried beyond
recovery in the ballast of the line.
But why pursue this painful subject further? It is sufficient to say
that although the scattered mails were carefully collected, re-sorted,
and, finally, as far as possible, delivered, the letter with which we
have specially to do never reached its destination. Indeed, it never
more saw the light of day, but remained in the hole where it had been
buried, and thus it came to pass that Mr William Stiggs failed to make
his appearance on the appointed night of the 15th, and Abel Bones was
constrained to venture on his deed of darkness alone.
On the appointed night, however, Tottie did not fail to do her best to
frustrate her father's plans. After a solemn, and last, consultation
with her mother, she left her home with fluttering heart and dry tongue,
and made for the General Post-Office.