d to a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer, under charge of a
bold and noble engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over
him, and call him his Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where he was
built used to read wonderful stories of railroad life, and .007 expected
things to happen as he had heard.) But there did not seem to be many
vestibuled fliers in the roaring, rumbling, electric-lighted yards, and
his engineer only said:

"Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on
to this rig this time?" And he put the lever over with an angry snap,
crying: "Am I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?"

The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present
state of the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer would
switch and keep on switching till the cows came home. .007 pushed out
gingerly, his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his
own bell almost made him jump the track. Lanterns waved, or danced up
and down, before and behind him; and on every side, six tracks deep,
sliding backward and forward, with clashings of couplers and squeals of
hand-brakes, were cars--more cars than .007 had dreamed of. There
were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts,
and ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the
middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the
tracks; ventilated fruit--and milk-cars; flatcars with truck-wagons full
of market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and
green and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled
high with strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles
of shingles; flat-cars creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings,
angle-irons, and rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked. Men--hot
and angry--crawled among and between and under the thousand wheels; men
took flying jumps through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat
on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender as he returned; and
regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside him, screwing
down brakes, waving their arms, and crying curious things.

He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear
drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch
(yard-switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red
D, or Mercha