"Try for it, Rollie!" he shouted, and ran out into the rain. As he stood there he caught a glimpse of a figure fast leaving the yards. It was a man bent low over the handle-bars of a bicycle, his feet rising and falling with the quickness and ease of the trained racer. Mingle caught a flash of the steel spokes as the night despatcher turned the corner under the lamp-post into the road. Then he pulled himself up the stairs as if his feet were made of lead, and telegraphed the message to headquarters as slowly as if he had been a beginner, and not one of the best operators on the line.
The road that led outside of Jimtown stretched along through a bit of woods, and then plunged down the side of the mountain so steeply that loaded teams would halt every hundred feet or so to rest in the ascent.
A year before Rollins had coasted down Coon Hill, on a wager, but that was in broad daylight, with his club-mates stationed at every curve, and the roadway was cleared for him as far as the sandy stretch before the railroad crossing. Every stone had been picked out, and the water-bars evened up at the left-hand side. At one place, he remembered, his speed had been reckoned, in a measured one hundred yards, at forty miles an hour.
The railroad, to avoid the grade, followed the course of the Coponie, and circled about to the northward. Rollins had only to ride four miles to the ore-cars eleven—but such a night for coasting!
The rain made it hard for him to follow the little circle of light that his lantern threw before him as he scorched along the level stretch.
Before he reached the hill-top it seemed to him that he was standing still, and the road coming up at him like the surface of a great wheel.
At last, he felt that he had reached down-grade. How he longed now for the brake that he had so disdained! He determined to keep his feet going as long as he safely could, and he back-pedalled gently to keep them in place.
Thud! he struck the first water-bar, and his cap came forward over his eyes. He threw it off with a backward toss of his head.
Another jolt! He was too much in the middle of the road. He must keep more to the left. He was flying now. The rain poured down his face and stung him in a thousand prickling points.