't popular. The drivers went
sick or took leave when they were told off for her. She killed her
driver on the Jubbulpore line, she left the rails at Kajra, she did
something or other at Rampur Haut, and Lord knows what she didn't do or
try to do in other places! All the drivers fought shy of her, and in the
end she disappeared. They said she was condemned, but I shouldn't wonder
if the Company changed her number quietly, and changed the luck at the
same time. You see, the Government Inspector comes and looks at our
stock now and again, and when an engine's condemned he puts his
dhobi-mark on her, and she's broken up. Well, No. 31 was condemned, but
there was a whisper that they only shifted her number, and ran her out
again. When the drivers didn't know, there were no accidents. I don't
think we've got an unlucky one running now. Some are different from
others, but there are no man-eaters. Yes, a driver of the mail _is_
somebody. He can make Rs. 370 a month if he's a covenanted man. We get a
lot of our drivers in the country, and we don't import from England as
much as we did. 'Stands to reason that, now there's more competition
both among lines and in the labour market, the Company can't afford to
be as generous as it used to be. It doesn't cheat a man though. It's
this way with the drivers. A native driver gets about Rs. 20 a month,
and in his way he's supposed to be good enough for branch work and
shunting and such. Well, an English driver'll get from Rs. 80 to Rs.
220, and overtime. The English driver knows what the native gets, and in
time they tell the driver that the native'll improve. The driver has
that to think of. You see? That's competition!"

Experience returns to the engine-sheds, now full of clamour, and
enlarges on the beauties of sick locomotives. The fitters and the
assistants and the apprentices are hammering and punching and gauging,
and otherwise technically disporting themselves round their enormous
patients, and their language, as caught in snatches, is beautifully
unintelligible.

But one flying sentence goes straight to the heart. It is the cry of
Humanity over the task of Life, done into unrefined English. An
apprentice, grimed to his eyebrows, his cloth cap well on the back of
his curly head and his hands deep in his pockets, is sitting on the edge
of a tool-box ruefully regarding the very much disorganised engine whose
slave is he. A handsome boy, this apprentice, and well made. He whistles