Dawn found the men at this trying work. At seven o’clock hot coffee and sandwiches were served out to them, and they stopped work for ten minutes to swallow the food. At eight, a cold rain began to fall, that froze into sleet upon the ground, so that the men could scarcely stand. Still they laboured doggedly on. Train-master and superintendent were everywhere, encouraging the men, making certain that not a blow was wasted, themselves taking a hand now and then, with pick or shovel. There was no thought of rest; human nature must be pushed to its utmost limit of endurance—this great leviathan of steel and oak must be made whole again. All along its two hundred miles of track, passengers were waiting, fuming, impatient to reach their destinations; thousands of tons of freight filled the sidings, waiting the word that would permit it to go forward. Here in the hills, with scarcely a house in sight, was the wound that stretched the whole system powerless—that kept business men from their engagements, wives from husbands, that deranged the plans of hundreds; ay, more than that, it was keeping food from the hungry, the ice was melting in refrigerator-cars, peaches and apples were spoiling in hot crates, cattle were panting with thirst,—all waiting upon the labours of this little army, which was fighting so valiantly to set things right.
CHAPTER XII.
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.