At last, she gave in altogether. They had hunted her to her grave. Who may contend with destiny? She lay down under a moving coal–train, and resigned herself to die. But first she must ask for sympathy, although so unlikely to get it. She looked once more at her wounded foot, and shivered and sobbed with the agony; and then gave vent to one long low cry, to ask if no one loved a poor dog there.
Cradock heard it, and started so that it was nearly all up with him too. Thoroughly he knew the cry, wherein she had wailed for Clayton. He flung down his book, and dashed to the place, and there he saw Wena, and she saw him. She began to try to limp to him, but he held up his hand to stop her; disabled as she was, she was sure to be caught by the wheel. Could she stay there, and let the train pass her? No. At its tail was an empty horse–box, almost scraping the ground, perfectly certain to crush her. Crying, “Down, down, my poor darling!” he ran down the train, which was travelling seven or eight miles an hour, seized the side of a truck, and leaped, at the risk of his life, upon the fender in front of the horse–box. Then he got astride of the coupling–chain, and kept his right hand low to the ground, to snatch her up ere the crusher came. Knowing where she was, he caught her by the neck the instant the truck disclosed her, and, with a strong swing, heaved her up into it. But he lost his balance in doing it, and fell sideways, with his head on the other coupling–chain. Stunned by the blow, he lay there, only clinging by his right calf to the chain he had sat astride upon. The first jerk of either chain, the first swing of either carriage, and he must be ground to powder.
Luckily for him and for Amy, Morshead was not gone home yet, seeing more to do than usual. Missing his mate from the proper place, he had run up in terror to look for him, when a man in a truck, who had vainly been shouting to stop the coal–trainʼs engine, pointed and screamed to him where and what was doing. Morshead jumped on the heap of pig–iron, and sideways thence on the board of the truck just passing, as dangerous a leap as well could be, but luckily that truck was empty. He jumped into the truck, a shallow one, where poor Wena lay quite paralysed, and, stooping over the back with both arms, he got hold of Cradockʼs collar. Then, with a mighty effort, he jerked him upon the tail–board, and lugged him in, and bent over him.
Wounded Wena crawled up, and begged to have her poor foot looked at, then, obtaining no notice at all, she felt that Cradock must be killed and dead, just as Clayton had been. Upon this conclusion, she fetched such a howl, though it shook her sore tail to do it, that the engine–driver actually looked round, and the train was stopped.
Hereupon, let me offer a suggestion—everybody now is allowed to do so, though nobody ever takes it. My suggestion is, that no man should be allowed to drive an engine without having served a twelvemonthʼs apprenticeship as an omnibus conductor. I donʼt mean to say it would improve his morals—probably rather otherwise; but it would teach him the habit of looking round; it would let him know that there really is more than one quarter of the heavens. At present, all engine–drivers seem afraid of being turned into pillars of salt. So they fix themselves, like pillars of stone, and stare, ἀχηνίαις ὀμμάτων, through their square glass spectacles.
When one of the railway bajuli—who are, on the whole, very good sort of fellows, and deserve their Christmas–boxes—came home in the cab with Cradock and Wena at the expense of the Company (which was boasted of next board–day)—when one of them came home with Crad—for Morshead had double work again—Polly Ducksacre went into strong hysterics, and it required two married men and a boy to get her out of the potato–bin.
It was all up with our Crad that night. The overwork of brain and muscle, the presence of mind required all the time when his mind was especially absent, the impossibility of thinking out any of his trains of ideas when a train of trucks was upon him, the native indignation of a man at knowing that his blood is meant to ebb down a railway sewer, and a new broom will sweep him clean—all these worries and wraths together, cogging into the mill–wheel of cares already grinding, had made such a mill–clack in his head near the left temple, where the thump was, that he could only roll on his narrow bed at imminent risk of a floor–bump.
Then the cold, long harbouring, struck into his heart and reins; and he knew not that Dr. Tink came, and was learned and diagnostic upon him; nor even that Polly Ducksacre took his feet out of bed, and rubbed them until her wrists gave way; and then, half ashamed of her womanhood, sneaked away, and cried over Wena.
Wenaʼs foot was put into splinters, Wenaʼs tail was stypticised; but no skill could save her master from a furious brain–fever.