And yet a cessation of movement brought him out of this profound slumber. It was as if his subconsciousness had stood on guard. He peered out from the side of the curtain. They were in a railway yard somewhere. Stalled. Freights were all about and yard engines puffing and whistling. He looked at his watch. Two. He had slept four hours. He resisted the intense craving to bury his head in the pillow again. No doubt he had been refreshed actually, but he was still drunk for the want of sleep. He slipped out of his berth, drenched a towel and slapped it over his face. Then he turned on the lights and dressed. When the right time came he would sleep forty hours.
The train went on at four. At dawn it came to a standstill again and did not stir until nine. They were on a side-track, and along the main line freight was roaring and thundering. What was happening to the world? A limited, one of the fastest known, side-tracked for freight! From six until nine the freight rolled by.
A newspaper! It was almost unbelievable. He felt rather stunned. He hadn't held a newspaper in his hands since leaving Honolulu! He did not actually know whether the Germans were in Paris or the Allies in Berlin. So held by the chase across the continent, giving his every thought to the affair, he had forgotten that the world was going on outside this particular orbit and great events were toward.
Twice again that day there were long delays at sidings, east of towns barely mentioned on the map. All the freight in America seemed to be moving east. On schedule time the train should be passing through central New York; and here they were, miles and miles west of Buffalo, the next real stop. The reporter brought him a sporting page from one Chicago newspaper and the editorial page from another. He was vaguely able to learn that nothing new had happened Over There, and that there was a coal famine and a great congestion at ports for lack of ships.
He began to fuss and fume and fret. He endeavored a thousand times to find a fresh angle for his weary shoulders. It couldn't be done. Pullmans were built for dividends, not comfort.
He wore a gray traveling-suit and a cap to match. The suit, though new, was in an astonishingly disreputable state. The solution is apparent; it does not signify carelessness. The fact is that you cannot loll and twist and curl up and at the same time keep the warp and woof of Scotch worsteds shipshape.
He yawned, stretched his arms until the sockets cracked, turned wrathfully and struck the top of the seat—that rolling lopover which is still one of the mysteries of modern times. Perhaps, in making the original car there had been a few yards of plush and excelsior left over. Splendid! Just enough for a pillow on the top of the seat-back, where no human head might reach it reposefully.
Mathison jumped to his feet and went through a bit of setting-up exercise. It was wasted effort. When a man is bored to the point where his soul aches along with his body, what he needs is a mental jolt, not a quickening of his respiratory organs. Nothing except that which attacks the eye surprisingly will serve to pull a man out of the bog of such lethargy.
Within the compartment, a pressed-steel imitation red mahogany, green plush, and a bluish haze which was the essence of many incinerated cigars and consumed pipes; outside, snow, thick and dusty and impenetrable. A great rimless, earthless, skyless world. But for the clatter of wheel upon rail, the train might have been speeding through the clouds; the illusion was almost perfect. Darkness was falling. Winter! After all these years of tropical climes!