The water was about up to the bottom steps of the car platforms and the pilot of the leading engine threw to each side a fine billow of yellow water, sending a swell like that of a tramp steamer passing Gloucester, in among the floating outhouses and submerged slag heaps of the suburbs of Harrisburg and bringing cheers from thousands who watched the train’s advance from their second-story windows and forgot the condition of their first-floor furniture in the excitement of watching the amphibious prowess of the day express.
“We’ve seen the worst of it,” said the elderly, kindly conductor to a couple of excited women passengers as the last of the three-fourths of a mile of billows was thrown from the pilot of 1095. “We’ve seen the worst of it, but the train will have to wait here a little while—the fires are almost out.”
So 1095 and 1102 stood puffing and panting for a while on the high track while the afternoon sunlight dried their dripping flanks and the baffled Susquehanna rolled its burden of driftwood sullenly southward on their right. Then the day express rolled on again. The dry ground was just about long enough to give the train an impetus for another header into the Susquehanna’s overflow.
It was into the Susquehanna itself that the header seemed to be taken this time. It was no longer a question of an overflow creek in a railroad cut. The billows from the prow of 1095 swept not in among overturned outhouses and submerged slag heaps, but out on the broad coffee-colored bosom of the river to be broken into a thousand chop waves among the churning driftwood. The people in the second-story windows forgot to cheer. The people in the coaches forgot to joke on the men’s part and to fret on the women’s. It was curious and it was ticklish.
The train was running slowly, very slowly. The wheels were out of sight. The water was swirling among the trucks and lapping at the platforms. The only sign of land locomotion about the day express was an audible one, a watery pounding and rumbling of the wheels on the hidden tracks.
The day express looked like a long broad river serpent wriggling on its belly down along the green river bank. Gradually there was a simultaneous though not concerted movement among the passengers. They began crowding toward the platforms and looking toward the land side. Suddenly a brakeman broke the queer silence, in a voice which had just the least crescendo of excitement in it.
“If you people don’t keep quiet we can’t do anything!” he shouted.
The demand was a little absurd, the direction of a land coxswain to “trim ship.” Still, it had its uses. It relieved the tension which everybody felt and nobody acknowledged. The passengers retired from the platforms.
Joking began again among the men and fretting among the women. There hadn’t been much fun in looking toward the land side anyway. What had appeared to be a recession of the waters when looked at from above was merely a swelling of the stream from the overflow of the canal which parallels the road for several miles at that point.
All at once the train, which had been moving more slowly for each of a good ten minutes, stopped short. It seemed as if 1095’s sharp nose had scented danger like a sensitive horse, and, panting, refused to go further.