All the rest of that afternoon Elliott watched the freight-yards, but, though some trains departed eastward, they appeared to contain no empty cars. After supper he returned to the railroad, and remained there till it grew dark. Trains came and went; there were engines hissing and panting without cease; all the dozen tracks were crowded with cars, and up and down the narrow alleys between them hastened men with lanterns, talking and swearing loudly. The crash and jar of coupling and shunting went on ceaselessly, and this activity did not lessen, and the night passed, for Brookfield was one of the “division points” on the main line of a great railroad.
It was nearly midnight when Elliott observed that a train was being made up with the caboose on the western end. He walked its length; the switchmen paid no attention to him, and he discovered an empty box car about the middle of the train, and into it he climbed without delay. For another half-hour, however, the manipulation of the cars continued, with successive violent shocks as fresh cars were coupled on. The whole train seemed to be broken and shuffled in the darkness, and it was hauled up and down till Elliott began to doubt whether it were going ahead at all. But at last he heard the welcome two blasts from the locomotive ahead, and in another minute the long train was labouring out.
This time he suffered no interference from any brakeman. The train was a fast freight; it made no stop for nearly two hours, and then continued after the briefest delay. The speed was high enough to make the springless car most uncomfortable, till the jolts seemed to shake the very bones loose in Elliott’s body. Every position he tried seemed more uncomfortable than the last, but he was determined to stay with the train as far as it went. After a few hours of being tossed about, he became somewhat stupefied, and even dozed a little, and between sleep and waking the night passed. In the first gray of morning the train pulled up at the great water-tank at Palmyra Junction, fifteen miles from Hannibal. He had travelled ninety miles that night.
The train went no farther. After waiting an hour or two for another, Elliott decided to walk the rest of the way, and he left Palmyra at nine o’clock, arriving in Hannibal, very tired and dusty, at a little after three. At the bottom of the long street he caught a glimpse of the broad Mississippi rolling yellow between its banked levees. The first stage of the journey was accomplished; the next would be upon the river.
CHAPTER III. THE ADVENTURER
When he went down to the levee an hour or two later, Elliott found no boats preparing to sail, and a general lack of activity about the steamer wharves. Sitting upon a stack of cotton-bales, he perceived a young man of rather less than his own age, smoking with something of the air of a busy man who finds a moment for relaxation. He was very much tanned; he wore a flannel shirt and a black tie, and his clothes were soiled with axle-grease and coal-dust. By these tokens Elliott recognized that he had been for some time in contact with the railways, but he did not look like a railway man, and his face wore a bright alertness that distinguished it unmistakably from that of the joyless hobo. Elliott took him for an amateur vagrant like himself.
“Seems to be nothing doing on the river. Do you know when there’s a boat for St. Louis?” he asked, pausing beside the cotton-bales.
The lounger took stock of Elliott, keenly but with good nature.
“There ought to be one leaving about six o’clock, but I don’t see any sign of her yet,” he responded. “Going down the river?”
“I thought I’d try it. Do you reckon the mate would take me on, even if it was only to work my passage?”