Just then Rollo heard sounds of new uproar and confusion approaching by another street. He looked in the direction, and saw an engine coming with its long lines of men and its great crowds, its torches and its thundering sounds. The great mass seemed to be coming on with prodigious momentum. They were coming down into the street where they were, and Rollo thought that they would certainly run over No. 10. When they approached the junction of the streets, and saw that the street which they were coming into was already filled up with another engine and the crowds about it, they did not stop, but kept rushing on, and swept around the corner directly into the crowd, where all became mixed and mingled together, making confusion worse confounded. The crowd became so dense that Rollo and Jonas could not have got along at all, were it not that the crowd itself was moving on; and so every body that was among them was necessarily borne onwards too.
Just then Rollo heard a very loud and hoarse voice calling out, “Hold on, No. 10! Hold on, No. 10!”
“What’s that?” said Rollo.
“That’s a man with a speaking-trumpet,” said Jonas.
“What does he mean by hold on?”
“He means stop,” replied Jonas. “He wants No. 10 engine to stop here.”
The cry of the engineer, “Hold on, No. 10!” was repeated and reechoed by a great many other voices in the crowd, though it was mingled and confounded with many other noises, such as the rumbling of the wheels upon the pavement, the dinging of the engine bells, and shouts and outcries from a hundred voices. At last, however, the men and boys attached to No. 10 seemed to understand that they were to “hold on;” and, accordingly, the engine gradually came to a stand, while the other, which was No. 6, as Rollo learned from a bright figure 6 which he saw tossing about in the air over the heads of those who were drawing it, moved on.
The men about No. 10 took out some long handles, which were secured by the side of the engine, and passed them through some iron rings, fitted to receive them; and then they all took hold, ten or fifteen men on each side ready to work the engine. Presently the order was given in the same hoarse and hollow voice from the speaking-trumpet, “Play away, No. 10!” and immediately the men began to work the long handles up and down, with quick and heavy strokes.
“Why, Jonas,” said Rollo, “what are they doing?”
“They are working this engine,” said Jonas.