It is true that the guard of your car may exclude some of these persons; but, as a rule, he does not. If he should be so inhospitable to his fellow-man there are still left the conductors and guards, who have business all over the train at all hours. There is a passage-way, as you know, right through the train. On a special car there is a room at each end; one is a smoking-room. This apartment, with or without your permission, is occupied by the officials of the train; and on a cold night not even the most exacting traveller would think of objecting to the arrangement. But it is easy to see that this does away with all ideas of privacy.
At 1.30 the train comes to a long stand-still. I am reading. The colored waiter, a negro with a face given over to the permanent expression of wonder, has taken a seat near me, in the opposite corner of the car. The end of the car opens right upon the line; the door is half glass, so that we can see out into the night and away down the track. To keep the outlook clear I occasionally rub the frosty rime from the glass, and now and then open the door and clear it from snow. The negro contemplates me through his wide, staring eyes. He takes a similar interest in the guards and other officers of the train, who come through the cars at intervals, swinging, as they walk, lamps of singularly artistic patterns when compared with the English railway lanterns. These guardians of the train pass out of the door of the room upon the line, and rarely reappear except when they come back again right through the train, passing most of the would-be sleepers. Irving does not, however, appear to be disturbed.
It is 2.35 when the train once more begins to move. For nearly an hour both the colored servant and I have, off and on, been watching a number of curious demonstrations of lights away down the line behind us. First a white light would appear, then a red one, then a green light would be flashed wildly up and down. The negro guesses we must be snowed up. But he doesn’t know much of this line, he says, in a deprecatory tone; only been on it once before; doesn’t take much stock in it. Then he shakes his woolly head mysteriously; and what an air of mystery and amazement is possible on some dark faces of this African race! We move ahead for five minutes, and then we stop again. There is a clock on the inlaid panel of the car over the negro’s head. The time is steadily recorded on the dial. It is 2.45 when we advance once more. A hoarse whistle, like a foghorn at sea, breaks upon the solemnity of the night; then we pass a signal-box, and a patch of light falls upon our window. This is evidently the signal for another pause. “2.50” says the clock. The line behind us is now alive with lanterns. White lights are moving about with singular eccentricity. With my face close against the glass door-way I count six different lights. I also see dark forms moving about. All the lights are suddenly stationary. One comes on towards the train. Our guard frantically waves his light. Presently we stop with a jerk. The lights we have left in the distance now gyrate with the same inconsequential motion as the witch-fires of a fairy tale, or the fiends’ lights in the opera of Robert le Diable. Then they remain still again. I open the door. There is a foot of snow on the platform, and the feathery flakes are steadily falling. A solitary light comes towards us. The bearer of it gets upon the platform,—a solitary sentinel. The negro looks up at me, and asks me in a gentle kind of way, if I ever use sticking-plaster. “Yes,” I say, “sometimes.” A strange question. My reply appears to be a relief to him. Do I ever use sticking-plaster! There is a long pause outside and inside the car, as if some mysterious conference were going on. “Was you ever on the cars when they was robbed?” the negro asks. “No,” I say; “I was not.”—“Been on when there was shooting?” he asks. “No.”—“Has you ever heard of Jesse James and the book that was written about him?”—“Yes,” I answer, “but never saw the book.”—“Dark night, eh?”—“Yes, pretty dark.”—“They would stop de train, and get a shooting right away, would dem James boys, I tell you! Perfeck terror dey was. No car was safe. Ise believe dey was not killed at all, and is only waiting for nex’ chance.”—“You are not frightened?” I say. “Well, not zactly; but don’t know who dis man is standing dere on de platform, and nebber was on any train of cars dat stopped so much and in such lonely places; and don’t like to be snowed up eider. I spoke to de brakesman about an hour ago; but he don’t say much.” Thereupon he flattens his broad nose against the window, and I take up “John Bull and His Island” at the description of the Christmas pudding, which sets me thinking of all the gloomy things that may and do happen between one Christmas Day and another; and how once in most lifetimes some overwhelming calamity occurs that makes you feel Fate has done its worst, and cannot hurt you more. This thought is not apropos of the present situation; for, of course, there is nothing to fear in the direction suggested by the negro, who has worked himself up into a condition of real alarm. At the same time the dangers of snow-drifts are not always confined to mere delays. The newspapers, on the day following our protracted journey for example, chronicled the blowing up of a locomotive, and the death of driver and stoker, through running into a snow-drift. The accident occurred not far from the scene of one of our longest stoppages.
2.55. The man on the platform cries “Go ahead!” and as the car moves he steps inside, literally covered with snow. He makes no apology, but shivers and shakes his coat.
“What is wrong?” I ask.
“Train stuck in the snow ahead of us. It is an awful night.”
“What were those lights in our rear?—one in particular.”
“That was me. I have been out there an hour and a half.”
“You are very cold?”
“Frightful.”