“I said Corbet could tell you a tough yarn or two,” remarked Whittock. “Why, Lord bless you, he’d keep you amused the whole evening. He has tales about all sorts of things, and, what is better, they are every one of them true.”
“This one is, that I’ll vow for,” returned the captain, “but I don’t say all I tell are.”
“We don’t ask whether they are true or not,” observed Peace, with a smile. “It is enough for us to know that we are entertained. So long as the hours pass pleasantly away, and we all enjoy ourselves, what more is needed?”
Everybody appeared to coincide in this opinion, and so, after some more music, both vocal and instrumental, one of the guests, who it appeared, had been at one time a station-master in the United States, told the following tale, which we reserve for another chapter.
CHAPTER CXXXIII.
TIED TO THE TRACK—A STATION MASTER’S STORY.
“Our friend here,” said the station-master, “has given you a notion of what a life on the ocean wave is, now I’m just going on a different track altogether. Perhaps the most monotonous unromantic life it is possible to conceive is that of a railway servant, whether guard, engine-driver, porter, or station-master, and I dare say you are all astonished at my volunteering a tale about railway life.”
“Not at all! No such thing! Go on,” cried several.
“Well then, here goes,” cried the narrator.
“Along about the years sixty-seven and eight it got to be altogether too common a thing on our line putting sleepers across the track and tearing up rails, to throw the train off, so as to rob the express car; and some of the villains who were caught got pretty severe sentences.