909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, BY RUDYARD KIPLING
PUBLISHED, MARCH, 1909

REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OF
THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY

ILLUSTRATIONS

"A man with a ghastly scarlet head
follows, shouting that he must go
back and build up his Ray" _Frontispiece_

FOLLOWING PAGE

"Slides like a lost soul down that
pitiless ladder of light, and the
Atlantic takes her" 31

The Storm 39

"I've asked him to tea on Friday" 58

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

A STORY OF 2000 A.D.

With the Night Mail

At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of
one of the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec
in "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the
Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened
all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the
tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags
lay packed close as herrings in the long gray under-bodies which our
G. P. O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were filled as I
watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting
packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.

From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and
wonderfully learned official--Mr. L. L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the
Western Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old
romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He
introduces me to the Captain of "162"--Captain Purnall, and his relief,
Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large and red; but
each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and
aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals,
from L. V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction
of eyes habitually turned through naked space.

On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some
twenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress
of as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face
of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at
the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comic