time.  He was bigger than I, and he pivoted me and got through first.  The next instant a club swatted him on the head and he went down like a steer.  Another squad of bulls was waiting outside for us.  They knew they couldn’t stop the rush with their hands, and so they were swinging their clubs.  I stumbled over the fallen coon who had pivoted me, ducked a swat from a club, dived between a bull’s legs, and was free.  And then how I ran!  There was a lean mulatto just in front of me, and I took his pace.  He knew the town better than I did, and I knew that in the way he ran lay safety.  But he, on the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull.  He never looked around.  He just ran.  My wind was good, and I hung on to his pace and nearly killed him.  In the end he stumbled weakly, went down on his knees, and surrendered to me.  And when he discovered I wasn’t a bull, all that saved me was that he didn’t have any wind left in him.

That was why I left Washington—­not on account of the mulatto, but on account of the bulls.  I went down to the depot and caught the first blind out on a Pennsylvania Railroad express.  After the train got good and under way and I noted the speed she was making, a misgiving smote me.  This was a four-track railroad, and the engines took water on the fly.  Hoboes had long since warned me never to ride the first blind on trains where the engines took water on the fly.  And now let me explain.  Between the tracks are shallow metal troughs.  As the engine, at full speed, passes above, a sort of chute drops down into the trough.  The result is that all the water in the trough rushes up the chute and fills the tender.

Somewhere along between Washington and Baltimore, as I sat on the platform of the blind, a fine spray began to fill the air.  It did no harm.  Ah, ha, thought I; it’s all a bluff, this taking water on the fly being bad for the bo on the first blind.  What does this little spray amount to?  Then I began to marvel at the device.  This was railroading!  Talk about your primitive Western railroading—­and just then the tender filled up, and it hadn’t reached the end of the trough.  A tidal wave of water poured over the back of the tender and down upon me.  I was soaked to the skin, as wet as if I had fallen overboard.

The train pulled into Baltimore.  As is the custom in the great Eastern cities, the railroad ran beneath the level of the streets on the bottom of a big “cut.”  As the train pulled into the lighted depot, I made myself as small as possible on the blind.  But a railroad bull saw me, and gave chase.  Two more joined him.  I was past the depot, and I ran straight on down the track.  I was in a sort of trap.  On each side of me rose the steep walls of the cut, and if I ever essayed them and failed, I knew that I’d slide back into the clutches of the bulls.  I ran on and on, studying the walls of the cut for a favorable place to climb up.  At last I saw such a place.  It came just after I had passed under a bridge that carried a level street across the cut.  Up the steep slope I went, clawing hand and foot.  The three railroad bulls were clawing up right after me.