It is this overpowering sense of routine duty. It's a finer thing than sheer bravery, in my idea. However, I began to think that Markley was mad—laboring under some frenzy from drink, though I had never seen him touch liquor.
He did not move hand or foot, except in the mechanical control of his engine, his eyes going from the gauge to the timepiece with a steadiness that was more terrible and threatening than any gleam of insanity would have been. Once he glared back at the long train sweeping after the engine with a headlong speed that rocked it from side to side.
One could imagine he saw a hundred men and women in the cars, talking, reading, smoking, unconscious that their lives were all in the hold of one man, whom I now suspected to be mad. I knew by his look that he remembered that their lives were in his hand. He glanced at the clock.
"Twenty miles," he muttered. "Throw on more coal, Jack; the fire is going out."
I did it. Yes, I did it. There was something in the face of that man I could not resist. Then I climbed forward and shook him roughly by the shoulder.
"Markley," I shouted, "you are running this train into the jaws of death!"
"I know it," he replied quietly.
"Your mother is on board."
"Heavens!"
He staggered to his feet. But even then he did not remove his eyes from the gauge.