Past them ran the iron rails of the narrow-gauged road which led out across the quaking tundra to the mountains and the mines.  Upon this slender trail of steel there rolled one small, ungainly teapot of an engine which daily creaked and clanked back and forth at a snail’s pace, screaming and wailing its complaint of the two high-loaded flat-cars behind.  The ties beneath it were spiked to planks laid lengthwise over the semi-liquid road-bed, in places sagging beneath the surface till the humpbacked, short-waisted locomotive yawed and reeled and squealed like a drunken fish-wife.  At night it panted wearily into the board station and there sighed and coughed and hissed away its fatigue as the coals died and the breath relaxed in its lungs.

Early to bed and early to rise was perforce the motto of its grimy crew, who lived near by.  To-night they were just retiring when stayed by a summons at their door.  The engineer opened it to admit what appeared to his astonished eyes to be a Krupp cannon propelled by a man in yellow-oiled clothes and white cotton mask.  This weapon assumed the proportions of a great, one-eyed monster, which stared with baleful fixity at his vitals, giving him a cold and empty feeling.  Away back beyond this Cyclops of the Sightless Orb were two other strangers likewise equipped.

The fireman arose from his chair, dropping an empty shoe with a thump, but, being of the West, without cavil or waste of wind, he stretched his hands above his head, balancing on one foot to keep his unshod member from the damp floor.  He had unbuckled his belt, and now, loosened by the movement, his overalls seemed bent on sinking floorward in an ecstasy of abashment at the intrusion, whereupon with convulsive grip he hugged them to their duty, one hand and foot still elevated as though in the grand hailing-sign of some secret order.  The other man was new to the ways of the North, so backed to the limit of his quarters, laid both hands protectingly upon his middle, and doubled up, remarking, fervidly: 

“Don’t point that damn thing at my stomach.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the fireman, with unnatural loudness.  “Have your joke boys.”

“This ain’t no joke,” said the foremost figure, its breath bellying out the mask at its mouth.

“Sure it is,” insisted the shoeless one.  “Must be—­we ain’t got anything worth stealing.”

“Get into your clothes and come along.  We won’t hurt you.”  The two obeyed and were taken to the sleeping engine and there instructed to produce a full head of steam in thirty minutes or suffer a premature taking off and a prompt elision from the realms of applied mechanics.  As stimulus to their efforts two of the men stood over them till the engine began to sob and sigh reluctantly.  Through the gloom that curtained the cab they saw other dim forms materializing and climbing silently on to the cars behind; then, as the steam-gauge touched the mark, the word was given and the train rumbled out from its shelter, its shrill plaint at curb and crossing whipped away and drowned in the storm.