“Look out for the curve, Jack, or you’ll go to the devil flying.”
“Aye, aye, lad,” he replied in a bantering tone. “We’ll have a chat with your father, it we do.”
We sat and watched them go steadily down the line until they drew near the curve, then from some unaccountable cause, we saw Jack Scrobbie fall backwards off the trolley and roll over the edge of the precipice. The others seemed at once to lose control of the trolley, for it bounded forward. We saw them straining at the brakes, but we sat spellbound for an instant.
“Good God! Look! They’re over!”
And to our horror we saw the trolley jump the rails at the curve, bound into space and disappear into that terrible abyss below. The words so lightly spoken but a few minutes before came to our minds, as each man sprang to his feet and ran towards the path that led down to the foot of the precipice. We searched the neighbourhood all that day, but no traces of men or trolley were ever seen again.
CHAPTER XV
The Cost of Liquor and My Return to Lima
Strange though it may seem, and to show the small value which was placed on human life in those rough times, the tragedy narrated in the previous chapter was forgotten in a few days by most of us, until about two weeks afterwards, while a number of us were sitting around the camp fire smoking our pipes before turning in for the night, big Tom Dixon referred to the affair and remarked that it was a big price to pay for a drink.
“You’re right, Tom,” said Alec McLeod, “and many a hundred lives have been lost up these mountains from that same cause. I well remember when we were making the old Sacremonta Railway up in California I saw a similar occurrence. It was this way:
“One evening, after a difficult piece of work had been done, our superintendent sent us a couple of cases of whiskey, ‘to wet the job’ as he called it. Among our party was a young strapping fellow, he had been an athlete in the old country, clean in speech and actions, a man every inch of him, to whom the taste of drink was unknown, but whether through forgetfulness or bravado, this day he was persuaded to take some whisky. Not being used to it he was soon under its deadly influence, and ere an hour had passed the man had become a changed creature, and was boasting and bragging of his feats in the old country, and offering to run or jump with any man in the camp. We all knew it was the whisky, and not the man that was talking, and so took no notice of what he was saying. But he would not let the matter drop, and to make matters worse near to our camp there was a great chasm in the mountain about twelve feet wide. The surface for about fifty yards on either side was quite flat. The chasm was fully three hundred feet deep, and he offered to bet anybody ten dollars that he could jump across the chasm, and no man in the camp would dare to follow him.