In one of these evolutions more sudden and violent than the rest the pole snapped off in the futchells!
Here was a predicament! Half-way down one of the ugliest hills in England, with a resolute frightened team and a broken pole. Nothing for it but to put them along and keep them galloping. The broken pole bobbing and dancing along at the end of the chains helped me materially to do this. The leaders finding the bars at the end of the whippletree all gone mad, took the hint and went off as hard as they could lay legs to the ground. My only care was to keep them straight, and the pace so good as to prevent the coach getting upon the lock, in which case we must have gone over.
It was a fearful moment, and never in all my coaching experience have I passed through such a crisis.
“Let ’em have it!” cries Jack Everett.
“Nothing but the pace can save us!” cries Fred North, the guard.
She rocked, they galloped, we shouted to encourage them. Fortunately they were very evenly matched in pace. If there had been one shirk it must have been fatal.
Providence protected us on this occasion, and I had the good fortune to keep the pace up till we got upon a level, and then gradually stopped her, and, by way of a finale, we had a rattling good kicking match before we could get the wheelers away from the coach.
I have been in many coach accidents, some of which, I regret to say, have been much more serious in their results, but I always consider that our lives were in greater jeopardy for the four or five minutes after that pole snapped than during any other epoch of my life.
Rarely, if ever, has there been a similar accident upon a plain open road. Poles are often snapped by inexperienced coachmen getting upon the lock in attempting to turn without room, and trusting to the strength of the pole to drag the coach across the road.