The Iron Horse

The Iron Horse, by R.M.
Ballantyne

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Title: The Iron Horse
Author: R.M. Ballantyne
Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21740]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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HORSE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

THE IRON HORSE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.
CHAPTER ONE.
TREATS OF THE ENGINE-DRIVER'S HOUSE AND

HOUSEHOLD.
Talk of earthquakes! not all the earthquakes that have rumbled in
Ecuador or toppled over the spires and dwellings of Peru could
compare, in the matter of dogged pertinacity, with that earthquake
which diurnally and hourly shocked little Gertie's dwelling, quivered
the white dimity curtains of little Gertie's bed and shook little Gertie's
frame. A graceful, rounded little frame it was; yet strong, and firmly
knit--perhaps in consequence of its having been from infancy so
constantly and so well shaken together.
Her neat little body was surmounted by a head which no sculptor in
search of an antique model would have chosen. Gertie's profile was not
Grecian; her features were not classic--but they were comely, and rosy,
and so sweet that most people wanted to kiss them, and many people
did. Gertie did not object. Probably, being only six, she imagined that
this was the ordinary and natural method of salutation. Yet it was
observable that the child did not reciprocate kisses except in one or two
special cases. She had evidently a mind of her own, a fact which was
displayed most strikingly, in the passionate manner in which she
reciprocated the embraces of John Marrot, her father, when that large
hairy individual came in of an evening, and, catching her in his long
arms, pressed her little body to his damp pilot-cloth-coated breast and
her chubby face to his oily, smoke-and-soot begrimed countenance,
forgetful for the moment of the remonstrance from his wife that was
sure to follow:--
"Now then, John, there you go again. You ain't got no more power of
subjewin' your feelings than one of your own ingines, w'ich is the
schreechin'ist, fizzin'ist, crashin'ist, bustin' things I ever 'ad the
misfortune to 'ave to do with. There's a clean frock just put on this
mornin' only fit for the wash-tub now?"
But John was an easy-going man. He was mild, kind, sedate,
undemonstrative by nature, and looked upon slight matrimonial breezes
as being good for the health. It was only Gertie who could draw him
into demonstrations of feeling such as we have described, and, as we
have said, she always reciprocated them violently, increasing thereby

the wash-tub necessity tenfold.
It would have been strange indeed if John Marrot could have been
much put about by a small matrimonial breeze, seeing that his life was
spent in riding on an iron monster with white-hot lungs and boiling
bowels which carried him through space day and night at the rate of
fifty miles an hour! This, by the way, brings us back to our
text--earthquakes.
Gertie's house--or Gertie's father's house, if you prefer it--stood close to
the embankment of one of our great arterial railways--which of them,
for reasons best known to ourself, we don't intend to tell, but, for the
reader's comfort, we shall call it the Grand National Trunk Railway. So
close did the house stand to the embankment that timid female
passengers were known occasionally to scream as they approached it,
under the impression that the train had left the rails and was about to
dash into it--an impression which was enhanced and somewhat justified
by the circumstance that the house stood with one of its corners; instead
of its side, front, or back; towards the line; thereby inducing a sudden
sensation of wrongness in the breasts of the twenty thousand
passengers who swept past it daily. The extreme edge of its most
protruding stone was exactly three yards four inches--by
measurement-- from the left rail of the down line.
Need we say more to account for the perpetual state of earthquakedom,
in which that house was involved?
But the tremors and shocks to which it was exposed--by night and by
day--was not all it had to bear. In certain directions of the wind it was
intermittently enveloped in clouds of mingled soot and steam, and,
being situated at a curve on the line where signalling became
imminently needful, it was exposed to all the varied horrors of the
whistle from the sharp screech of interrogation to the successive bursts
of exasperation, or the prolonged and deadly yell