Such a friend had I in George H——. We were inseparable—both of us unmarried; we would always manage to board together, and on all possible occasions to be together. Did George's engine lay up for the Sunday at one end of the road, and mine at the other, one of us was sure to go over the road "extra," in order that we might be together.
George and I differed in many respects, but more especially in this, that whereas I was one of the "fast" school of runners, who are never so contented with running as when mounted on a fast engine, with an express train, and it behind time. George preferred a slow train, where, as he said, his occupation was "killing time," not "making" it. So while I had the "Baltic," a fast engine, with drivers six feet and a half in diameter, and usually ran express trains, George had the "Essex," a freight engine, with four feet drivers.
One Saturday night I took the last run north, and was to "lay over" with my engine for the Sunday at the northern terminus of the road, until two o'clock Monday P. M. George had to run the "Night Freight" down that night, and as we wished particularly to be together the next day, I concluded to go "down the line" with him. Starting time came, and off we started. I rode for awhile in the "caboose," as the passenger car attached to a freight train is called, but as the night was warm and balmy, the moon shining brightly, tinging with silvery white the great fleecy clouds that swept through the heaven, like monstrous floating islands of snow drifting over the fathomless waters of the sea, I went out and rode with George on the engine. The night was indeed most beautiful, the moonlight shimmering across the river, which the wind disturbed and broke into many ripples, made it to glow and shine like a sea of molten silver. The trees beside the track waved and beckoned their leafy tops, looking sombre and weird in the half-darkness of the night. The vessels we saw upon the river, gliding before the freshening breeze, with their signal lights glimmering dimly, and the occasional steamers with light streaming from every window, and the red light of their fires casting an unearthly glare upon the waters; these all combined to make the scene spread before us, as we rushed shrieking and howling over the road, one of unexcelled beauty. We both gazed at it, and said that if all scenes in the life of a railroad man were as beautiful as this we would wish no other life.
But something ailed George's engine. Her pumps would not work. After tinkering with them awhile, he asked the fireman if there was plenty of water in the tank; the fireman said there was, but to make assurance doubly sure I went and looked, and lo! there was not a drop! Before passing through the station George had asked the fireman if there was plenty of water. He replied that there was; so George had run through the station, it not being a regular stopping place for the train, and here we were in a fix. George thought he could run from where we had stopped to the next water station; so he cut loose from the train and started. We had stopped on the outside of a long curve, to the other end of which we could see; it was fully a half mile, but the view was straight across the water—a bay of the river sweeping in there, around which the track went.
In about twenty minutes after George had left we saw him coming around the farthest point of the curve; the brakeman at once took his station with his light at the end of the cars, to show George precisely where the train stood. The engine came swiftly towards us, and I soon saw he was getting so near that he could not stop without a collision, unless he reversed his engine at once; so I snatched the lamp from out the brakeman's hands, and swung it wildly across the track, but it was of no avail. On came the engine, not slackening her speed the least. We saw somebody jump from the fireman's side, and in the instant of time allowed us, we looked to see George jump, but no! he stuck to his post, and there came a shock as of a mountain falling. The heavy freight engine running, as it was, at as high a rate of speed as it could make, crashed into the train; thirteen cars were piled into a mass of ruins, the like of which is seldom seen. The tender was turned bottom side up, with the engine lying atop of it, on its side. The escaping steam shrieked and howled; the water, pouring in on to the fire, crackled and hissed; the stock (sheep and cattle) that were in the cars bellowed and bleated in their agony, and it seemed as if all the legions of hell were there striving to make a pandemonium of that quiet place by the river-side. As soon as we recovered from the shock and got used to the din which at first struck terror to our hearts—and I think no sound can be more terrible than the bellowing of a lot of cattle that are crushed in a railroad smash-up—we went to work to see if George was alive, and to get him out, dead or alive. We found him under the tender, but one side of the tank lay across his body, so that he could not move. We got rails and lifted and pried, until we raised the tender and got him out. We took one of the doors from the wrecked cars, laid it beside the track, and made a bed on it with our coats and the cushions from the caboose; for poor George said he wanted to pass the few moments left him of earth beneath the open sky, and with the cool breeze to fan his cheek. Of course we dispatched a man to the nearest station for aid, and to telegraph from there for an engine; but it was late at night, everybody was asleep, and it was more than three hours before any one arrived, and all that time George lingered, occasionally whispering a word to me as I bent over him and moistened his lips.
He told me while lying there the reason why he did not stop sooner. Something had got loose on the inside throttle gearing, and he could not shut off steam, nor, owing to some unaccountable complicity of evil, could he reverse his engine. So on he had to come, pell-mell, and both of them were killed; for the fireman had jumped on some rocks, and must have died instantly, as he was most horribly mangled.
The night wind moaned through the wreck, the dripping water yet hissed upon the still hot iron of the engine, the waves of the river gurgled and rippled among the rocks of the shore, and an occasional bellow of agony was heard from amidst the cattle cars, where all the rest of the hands were at work releasing the poor creatures; but I sat there, in sad and solemn silence, waiting for him to die that had been as a brother to me. At last, just as we heard the whistle of the approaching engine, and just as the rising sun had begun to gild and bespangle the purpling east, George opened his eyes, gave my hand a faint grasp, and was no more. I stood alone with the dead man I had loved so in life, but from whom death had now separated me.