gripped vice-like in Lannigan's big fist, was swinging a good
part of Lannigan's one hundred and ninety-eight pounds.

Left to themselves each horse would have leaped at a different instant.
It was that one touch of the lash and the succeeding swing of Lannigan's
bulk which gave them the measure, which set the time, which made it
possible for less than four thousand pounds of horse-flesh to jump a
five-ton truck up the street at a four-minute clip.

For Silver all other minor pleasures in life were as nothing to the
fierce joy he knew when, with a dozen men clinging to the hand-rails,
the captain pulling the bell-rope and Lannigan, far up above them all,
swaying on the lines, the Gray Horse Truck swept up Broadway to a first
call-box.

It was like trotting to music, if you've ever done that. Possibly you
could have discovered no harmony at all in the confused roar of the
apparatus as it thundered past. But to the ears of Silver there were
many sounds blended into one. There were the rhythmical beat of hoofs,
the low undertone of the wheels grinding the pavement, the high note of
the forged steel lock-opener as it hammered the foot-board, the mellow
ding-dong of the bell, the creak of the forty-and fifty-foot extensions,
the rattle of the iron-shod hooks, the rat-tat-tat of the scaling
ladders on the bridge and the muffled drumming of the leather helmets as
they jumped in the basket.

With the increasing speed all these sounds rose in pitch until, when the
team was at full-swing, they became one vibrant theme--thrilling,
inspiring, exultant--the action song of the Truck.

To enjoy such music, to know it at its best, you must leap in the
traces, feel the swing of the poles, the pull of the whiffle-trees, the
slap of the trace-bearers; and you must see the tangled street-traffic
clear before you as if by the wave of a magician's wand.

Of course it all ended when, with heaving flanks and snorting nostrils
you stopped before a building, where thin curls of smoke escaped from
upper windows. Generally you found purring beside a hydrant a shiny
steamer which had beaten the truck by perhaps a dozen seconds. Then you
watched your men snatch the great ladders from the truck, heave them up
against the walls and bring down pale-faced, staring-eyed men and women.
You saw them tear open iron shutters, batter down doors, smash windows
and do other things to make a path for the writhing, white-bodied,
yellow-nosed snakes that un