just gave a look at my carriage, and shook his head at it knowingly.
“‘Oh, it’s that customer again, is it? He’s at his old tricks. He’ll drop to pieces one of these line days. Come along, sir, I’ll find you another.’”
“What line was that on?” inquired the nervous man.
“When one thinks,” proceeded the dyspeptic, disregarding the question, “of the trivial causes which will produce railway accidents, the only wonder is that there are not more. I have heard it asserted that so slight a thing as the burrowing of a mole is enough to throw a whole train off the line, by causing the sleeper to sink. Whether it is true or not—”
A voice interrupted the speaker. By the way, I put it to any candid and unbiassed traveller, whether these, my companions, were such as he would choose, under the head of pleasant conversable fellows on a journey? But that is an aside. I was following with painful minuteness the scene of the mole’s burrow, the sunk sleeper, and the train pitched over an embankment, when the voice above-mentioned, to my unspeakable, but alas! only momentary satisfaction, broke the dyspeptic thread. It was a deep, hollow voice, and it proceeded from the chest of the wiry man. And it said, “I once had an adventure—” It paused at a groan which I tried to smother in my big plaid; while the two other pleasant fellows bristled up with a ghoulish expectation.
“I once had a little adventure in a railway carriage, which may strike you gentlemen as at least uncommon. It occurred in the closing stage of a pretty long journey, and upon a branch line, on which, fortunately for me, there was little traffic. I must premise, however, that there were two lines of rail. In changing carriages I was tired and stupid, and got into the first which offered itself, rather glad to find that it had no other occupant. And as I calculated that there were full two hours of slow travelling before me, I made myself as snug as circumstances would permit, and the result is simple. I fell fast asleep. I had all sorts of fantastic dreams, of course, as one does have in unusual positions; but what waked me? I did not know; nor why I felt constrained to start up with a horrible misgiving at my heart, as I opened my eyes. It was pitch-dark. The light in the roof had gone out, or else had never existed. But where were we, and why was it dark? Above all, why were we not moving, and why did the darkness grow upon me as something that could be felt? There is a song about the beating of one’s own heart: it was, indeed, the only sound I heard as I made my way to the window. I could see nothing but the luminous rings which came as I beat my eyelids together, vainly; I could not see my hand before me; I could only feel. I tried my waistcoat pocket for a fusee box—found it; there were but two matches, and I struck one desperately. Oh, the glorious beauty of that light! transient as it was; the utter miserable darkness which followed, as it sputtered for a moment and then went out. It had showed me nothing but a ghastly heap in one corner, which I started from nervously, remembering the next moment that it was my own coat and wrap. I shouted, but there was no one to answer, while the sound of my own voice told me where I was. I knew all about it by that time, though I tried to fight off the conviction. I had got into the last carriage in the train, and had been left behind; not under the broad sky, where the starlight might have helped me, but in a tunnel, and alone. That was the crowning horror. Why should this last carriage have been the only one left, as it must have been, for I had shouted loud enough to rouse the seven sleepers; and why was there no one in it but myself? I knew the tunnel and its length, but whereabouts in its hideous blackness was I? Should I get out? I tried the doors, but they were locked; I could perhaps have scrambled through one of the windows, but to what purpose, and on which side? Stretching out my hand, I tried to feel for the wall of the tunnel, shuddering as I thought it would meet me clammy and stone-cold, like the hand of a corpse. But I could not reach it. Was it the other side? I passed over to try. Hush! What was that? I drew back my arm instinctively, and sunk down a helpless mass on my seat again. Do you know what it was, gentlemen, that I heard then? It was the snort of a distant engine. Everywhere before me I saw the glare of two ferocious eyes, like the eyes of a wild beast in his den, and I knew that every snort was bringing the monster steadily closer. Which line of rails was it upon? Nearer still. Another minute—less—and where should I be? Mutilated fragments of a human body once my own, whirling away in all directions, rose up to answer that question as it passed through my mind. Nearer still. It takes but a second, say the wise and learned, to bring before a man his whole life; but in that strange moment, instinct as it was with a horrible and fascinated excitement, I saw only the ferocious eyes, and heard the voice of my young brother, dead long years ago, calling upon me to come and save him, as he was wont to do in his delirium. Nearer still—and the earth quivered beneath me, and thunder filled my ears. There was a whirling rush, a quick wind, and then the roar going off into the distance again. When I could think of myself, I found that I was sitting doubled up, shrinking as a man would from a threatened blow, and my hands were clenched till I felt the smart of the nails in my flesh. The train had chanced to be on the other line of rails, or—I had not been sitting here now to speak of it. An engine was dispatched to bring up the missing carriage, as soon as the fact of its having been left behind was discovered. And so ended my little adventure,—in good time, for this is your station, I think, gentlemen.”
And the nervous man and the dyspeptic got out. The hero of the little adventure looked at me, and coughed twice; then he sneezed; but my eyes were sealed in the energy of despair, and finding his case hopeless, he suffered me to do the rest of the journey in silence, with a buzzing brain, and the mental resolution of a timid man, who will never again suffer himself to be beguiled into putting himself in the power of “Pleasant conversable fellows on a journey.”
