“Iʼve tottled all them as are going out,” Mr. Morshead informed Cradock; “now youʼll see how we enters them as they enters.”
Laughing at his own very miserable joke, he leaped on the chains of the passing waggons, and held up his hand for Cradock not to attempt to do the same.
“Takes a deal of practice that,” he cried, after he had crossed the train; “it ainʼt like a passenger–train, you know; and you must larn when they are standing. I need not to have done it now, but sometimes I be forced. Bide where you are; no danger unless they comes with the flaps down.”
Then he jotted down, with surprising quickness, all the necessary particulars of the train that was coming in. It happened to be an easy one; for there were no tarpaulins at all, and it was not travelling faster than about four miles an hour.
“Some drivers there is,” said Morshead, as he rejoined Cradock round the tail of the train, “who really seem to want to kill a fellow, they come by at such a pace, without having any call for it. I believe they think, the low fools, that we are put as spies upon them, and they would rather kill us than not.—Hold your tongue,” to a man in a truck, who was interrupting his lecture; “donʼt you know better than to offer me that stuff? Never touch what they offers you, sir. They means no harm, but you had safer take poison when you be on duty. There is not much real danger just here, if a fellow is careful, because the rails run parallo; there is nothing round the curve now, I see, and only two coming out, and both of they be scored; itʼs a rare chance to show you the figures of eight, and slide–points where the chief danger is. Show you where poor Charley was killed last week, and how he did it.”
“Poor fellow! Did he leave any family?”
“Twelve in all. No man comes here, unless he be tired of his life, or be druv to it by the little ones.”
“And what did the Company do for them?”
“Oh, behaved most ‘andsome for them. Allowed ‘em two bob a week for a twelvemonth to come—twopence apiece all round. But they only did it to encourage me, for fear I should funk off. I have seen out three mates now. Please God, I shanʼt see you out too, my lad.”
“If you do, it shanʼt be from funk, Morshead. I rather like the danger.”