Then the engine crews were seen by the passengers to leap from their cabs thigh deep in the water and begin hauling at some sub-aquean obstacle.
“Driftwood,” said the same brakeman who had commanded quiet.
So it was. A train stopped by driftwood! It was floating all about and threatened to impede the progress of the day express altogether. Fence rails from far up country farms, planks from dismantled signal stations, platforms along the line, railroad ties innumerable, branches and even small trunks of trees floated against the wheels with disjected stacks of green wheat and other ruined crops upon the ever-rising flood of the river.
There had been high dry land in sight just beyond Highspire Station, but as sure as guns were iron and floods were floods the land was disappearing. The river’s rise was steady. The inhabitants of the drowned lands who appeared to take the drowning easily, though no such a drowning had been known to them in a quarter of a century, had been in large numbers keeping company of the train for the last two miles in skiffs and punts. They rowed close to the cars and towed away the larger drift. They were not entirely on life-saving service. There was a bit of the wreckage in their composition. They towed the trunk and ties into their front yards and anchored them to their window-blinds.
Finally the straining backs of the engine crews gave one mighty tug at the hidden obstacle. A huge platform plank floated loose from 1095, and 1095 shrieked triumph. The wheels began to churn the brown water with yellowish white and 1095 and 1102 ran up on the dry ground like the eagle in the sun, to whom the Irish poet compared the Irish troops at Fontenoy.
As they did so the clatter of a light advancing train was heard from the east, and a sound of cheering. A single engine drawing two crowded cars shot around the bend, and ran with a light heart into the torrent out of which the day express had just emerged.
“They’ll never get through,” was the unanimous comment of the day express passengers, and their verdict seemed to be confirmed officially by the brakeman who had been excited.
He stood in the door of the car and shouted: “This train will stop at all stations between Lancaster and Bryn Mawr. There will be no more trains between Harrisburg and Lancaster to-night.”
Afterwards he added: “As this is the last train it will have to take the place of the ‘tub.’”
THE FIRST RUSH OF THE DEATH WAVE.