allan laboured savagely with the others. one thought sang in his brain, keeping time to the steady rise and fall of the shovels: “the track must be cleared; the track must be cleared.” the great pile of coal before him took on a hideous and threatening personality—it was a dragon, with its claws at the road’s throat. it must be conquered—must be dragged away. from time to time he stopped a moment to munch one of the sandwiches, not noticing the dirt and coal-dust that settled upon it. he was not hungry, but he felt instinctively that he must eat the food.

most of the other men were chewing tobacco, their jaws working convulsively in unison with their arms. they had long since ceased to be human beings—they had become machines. their movements were precise, automatic, regular. their faces grew gradually black and blacker in the perpetual dust which arose from the coal; their eyes became rimmed with black, and bloodshot under the constant irritation of the dust. they breathed it in, swallowed it, absorbed it. their sense of smell and taste gradually left them—or, at least, they could smell and taste only one thing, coal-dust. they ceased to resemble men; one coming upon them unawares would have taken them for some horrible group from dante’s inferno, doing terrible penance through eternity. they looked neither to the right nor left; their eyes were always on the coal—on this shifting black monster with which they were doing battle. their hands seemed welded to the shovels, which rose and fell, rose and fell.

the cold rain beat in sheets around them, soaking their clothes, and yet they scarcely felt this added discomfort, so intent were they upon the task before them. most of them had thrown off their coats at the beginning of the struggle, and now their wet shirts stuck tightly to their skins, showing every muscle. gradually, by almost imperceptible degrees, the pile of coal on the banks of the cut grew higher; gradually the pile on the track grew less, but so slowly that it was agonizing.

above them on the bank, the great locomotive, hurled there and turned completely around by the force of the collision, stood a grim sentinel. it was the one piece of luck, the officers told themselves, in connection with this wreck, that the engine had been tossed there out of the way. to have raised it from the track and placed it there would have taken hours, and every minute was so precious! it would take hours to get it down again, but that need not be done until the track was clear.

toward the middle of the morning, three fresh gangs of men came from the east and fell to work beside the others. but the others did not think of stopping. instead, with staring eyes and tight-set teeth, they worked a little harder, to keep pace with the freshness and vigour of the newcomers. ninety shovels were hurling the coal aside, digging into it, eating it away. here, there, and everywhere the officials went, seeing that every stroke told, that not an ounce of energy was wasted, taking a hand themselves, driving themselves as hard as any of the men. soon the coal was heaped so high along the sides of the cut that a force was put to work throwing it farther back. almost all of it had to be handled twice!

noon came—a dark noon without a sun; a noon marked by no hour of rest for these toilers. back in the wrecking-car a great boiler of coffee steamed and bubbled; the cook carried pails of it among the men, who paused only long enough to swallow a big dipperful. even allan, who had no taste for it, drank deep and long, and he was astonished at the flood of warm vigour it seemed to send through him. every half-hour this coffee was passed around, strong and black and stimulating. it was a stimulation for which the men would pay later on in limp reaction, but it did its work now.

experience had proved that no other means was so good as this to sustain men against fatigue, hour after hour, and to drive away sleep from the brain. time was when the railroad company had experimented with other stimulants, but they had long since been discarded.

still the rain descended, and a biting wind from the north turned the weather steadily colder and colder. a sheet of sleet formed over the coal, welding it into a solid mass, which required the vigorous use of picks to dislodge. the men slipped and stumbled, gasping with exhaustion, but still the shovels rose and fell. here and there, the twisted and broken track began to appear.

at the side of the track the train-master called a lineman, who carried a wire up a pole and attached it to one of the wires overhead. a telegraph instrument was connected with this, and, sitting down upon the bank, the train-master ticked in to headquarters the news that the track would be clear at midnight, and repaired six hours later.

in this, as in everything, the train-master knew his men. ten minutes before midnight the last shovelful of coal was out of the way,—the track was clear,—one part of the battle had been won. but another part yet remained to fight,—the track must be rebuilt, and the work of doing it began without a moment’s delay. the twisted rails and splintered ties were wrenched out of the way; the road-bed, which had been ploughed up by the wheels of the derailed cars, was hastily levelled. from the wrecking-car gangs of men staggered under new ties and rails, which were piled along beside the track where they would be needed.

at last the road-bed was fairly level again, and ties were laid with feverish energy by the light of the flaring torches, which gave the scene a weirdness which it had lacked by day. phantoms of men moved back and forth, now disappearing in the darkness, now leaping into view again, working doggedly on, to their very last ounce of strength and endurance.

as the ties were got into place, the rails were spiked down upon them and fish-plates were bolted into place. rod after rod they advanced, tugging, hammering, with the energy of desperation. it was no question now of a perfect road-bed—rail must be joined to rail so that once more the red blood of commerce could be pumped along the artery they formed. after that there would be time for the fine points. and just as the sun peeped over the eastern hills, the last spike was driven, the last bolt tightened. the work was done.

the men cheered wildly, savagely, their voices hoarse and unnatural. then they gathered up their tools, staggered to the car, and fell exhausted on bunk or chair or floor, and went instantly to sleep. allan found afterward that he had no memory whatever of those last trying hours.

at the side of the road the train-master was ticking off a message which told that his promise was kept,—a message which sent a thrill of life along the line from end to end,—which told that the road was clear. then he cut loose his instrument, and he and the superintendent walked back to the car together. they were no longer the trim, good-looking men of every day—they were haggard, gaunt, unshaven. their eyes were bloodshot, their clothing soiled and torn. they had not spared themselves. for thirty-six hours they had been working without so much as lifting their hats from their heads. but they had won the battle—as they had won many others like it, though few quite so desperate.

on either side the track was piled a mass of twisted wreckage; the engine still lay high on the bank. that could wait. another crew could haul the engine down and gather up the débris, for the track was open.

the journey back took longer than the journey out. at every siding they headed in to let passenger and freight whirl past; the blood was bounding now, trying to make up for the time it had been stopped. but the men lying in the car saw none of them; the roar of their passage did not awaken them—they knew not whether the trip back took two hours or ten—they were deaf, blind, dead with fatigue. only at the journey’s end were they awakened, and it was no easy task. but at last they had all arisen, gaunt shadows of their former selves.

“boys,” said the superintendent, “i want to tell you that i’ve never seen a wreck handled as well as you handled this one. you did great work, and i’m proud of you. now go home and go to sleep,—sleep twenty-four hours if you can. don’t report for duty till to-morrow. and i promise you i won’t forget this night’s work.”

they staggered away through the curious crowd at the station, seeing nothing, turning instinctively in the direction of their homes.

“why,” remarked one white-haired man, gazing after them, “they look just as we looked after we got through the wilderness. they look like they’ve been under fire for a week.”

the superintendent, passing, heard the remark.

“they have,” he answered, dryly. “they’ve been under the heaviest kind of fire continuously for thirty-six hours. you fellows have had whole libraries written about you, and about a thousand monuments built to you. you get a pension while you live, and your grave is decorated when you die. i’m not saying you don’t deserve it all, for i believe you do. but there’s some other people in the world who deserve honour and glory, too,—section-men, for instance. i never heard of anybody building a monument to them, or calling them heroes; and, if there are any flowers on their graves, it’s their families put them there!”

he passed on, while his auditor stared open-mouthed, not knowing whether to be moved or angry. the superintendent’s nerves were shaken somewhat, or he might have spoken less bitterly; but a sudden sharp sense of the world’s injustice had clamoured for utterance.

and the wrecking-train was run in again on the siding, ready for the next trip.

the men, of course, paid the penalty for their almost superhuman exertions. no men could work as they had done and not feel the after-effects in diminished vitality. the younger ones among them soon recovered, for youth has a wonderful power of recuperation; the older ones were a little more bent, a little more gnarled and withered, a little nearer the end of the journey. they had sacrificed themselves on the altar of the great system which they served; they had done so without a murmur, with no thought of shirking or holding back. they would do so again without an instant’s hesitation whenever duty called them. for that was their life-work, to which they were dedicated with a simple, unquestioning devotion. there was something touching about it,—something grand and noble, too,—just as there is in a man dedicating himself to any work, whether to conquer the world with napoleon, or to keep clean a stretch of street pavement committed to his care. it was this dedication, this singleness of purpose—this serfdom to the road—which allan grew to understand more and more deeply, and to glory in.

and it was not an unworthy service, for the road was worth devotion. not the company of capitalists, who sat in an office somewhere in the east and manipulated its stocks and bonds, but the road itself,—this thing of steel and oak which had rendered possible the development of the country, which had added fabulously to its wealth, which bound together its widely separated states into one indivisible union. they were servants of the force which, more than any other, has made our modern civilization possible.

let me add that the story of this wreck is no imaginary one. it is a true story which actually occurred just as it is set down here; it is an experience which repeats itself over and over again in the life of every railroad man; it was a battle which, in one form or another, railroad men are always fighting, and always winning. and, more than most battles, is it worth winning!