In due time that holiday came to a close, and the excursionists returned to the station where their train awaited them. Among the rest came Mrs Tipps and Mrs Marrot, but they did not arrive together, and therefore, much to their annoyance, failed to get into the same carriage.
The weather, which up to that time had kept fine, began to lower, and, just as the train started, a smart thunder-shower fell, but, being under cover, the holiday-makers heeded it not. Upon the whole they were an orderly band of excursionists. Some of the separate groups were teetotallers, and only one or two showed symptoms of having sought to increase their hilarity by the use of stimulants.
When the shower began, John Marrot and his mate put on their pilot-cloth coats, for the screen that formed their only protection from the weather was a thin flat one, without roof or sides, forming only a partial protection from wind and rain.
Night had begun to descend before the train left the station, and as the lowering clouds overspread the sky, the gloom rapidly increased until it became quite dark.
“We are going to have a bad night of it,” observed John Marrot as his mate examined the water-gauge.
“Looks like it,” was Garvie’s curt reply.
The clatter of the engine and howling of the wind, which had by that time risen to a gale, rendered conversation difficult; the two men therefore confined themselves to the few occasional words that were requisite for the proper discharge of their duties. It was not a night on which the thoughts of an engine-driver were likely to wander much. To drive an excursion train in a dark night through a populous country over a line which was crowded with traffic, while the rain beat violently on the little round windows in the screen, obscuring them and rendering it difficult to keep a good look-out was extremely anxious work, which claimed the closest and most undivided attention. Nevertheless, the thoughts of John Marrot did wander a little that night to the carriage behind him in which were his wife and child, but this wandering of thought caused him to redouble rather than to relax his vigilance and caution.
Will Garvie consulted the water-gauge for a moment and then opened the iron door of the furnace in order to throw in more coal. The effect would have stirred the heart of Rembrandt. The instantaneous blinding glare of the intense fire shot through the surrounding darkness, lighting up the two men and the tender as if all were made of red-hot metal; flooding the smoke and steam-clouds overhead with round masses and curling lines of more subdued light, and sending sharp gleams through the murky atmosphere into dark space beyond, where the ghostly landscape appeared to rush wildly by.
Now it chanced that at the part of the line they had reached, a mineral train which preceded them had been thrown off the rails by a bale of goods which had fallen from a previous goods train. Carelessness on the part of those who had loaded the truck, from which the bale had fallen, led to this accident. The driver and fireman of the mineral train were rather severely hurt, and the guard was much shaken as well as excited, so that they neglected to take the proper precaution of sending back one of their number to stop the train that followed them. This would have been a matter of little consequence had the line been worked on the block system, because, in that case, the danger-signal would have been kept up, and would have prevented the excursion train from entering on that portion of the line until it was signalled “clear;” but the block system had been only partially introduced on the line. A sufficient interval of time had been allowed after the mineral train had passed the last station, and then, as we have seen, the excursion train was permitted to proceed. Thus it came to pass that at a part of the line where there was a slight curve and a deep cutting, John Marrot looking anxiously through his circular window, saw the red tail-light of the mineral train.
Instantly he cried, “Clap on the brakes, Bill!”