Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1876 — Chasing a Phantom. [ARTICLE]

Chasing a Phantom.

There were three others on the loco* motive, whose names were Thomas, llichard and Henry; I may abbreviate these appellations as I proceed with this sad narrative, We jogged along quietly to Bt. Thomas, the only excitement being running into a cow, and then the excitement was monopolized mostly by the cow. It was dark when we left St. Thomas and the night w’as wet. So we crowded into the engine-cab. We rattled along through a Canadian wilderness and the engineer kept his arm over the bell-rope and lazily pylled the bell to and fro, for the track was unfenced and we had to give continued warning of our coming; besides, the engine was running backwards, as there was no turn-table at Bt. Thomas Besides, the ordinary headlight, there was one perched on the top of the cab which shone backwards, ana by the light of this on the glistening rails we now traveled. When we struck into the forest primeval the woods were cleared away just enougli to allow the track to be built, and the wet branches of the overhanging trees scraped along the engine, and the headlight illuminated a long arcade ahead that looked like a green tunnel, and once a herd of startled deer jumped across the track one after another looking like thq pictures that follow each other in a magic lantern. Dick was just commencing to tell about how he chased a buffalo once, on the Union Pacific, when Tom cried out: “ There’s a squirrel or something on the track; let’s run it down.” A few rods ahead of the engine was some small animal jumping from tie to tie and running about as fast as we were. We all commenced throwing sticks of wood at it, and succeeded in missing it. The engineer laughed at our efforts, and drew on a couple more notches of steam, but the little creature crept ahead. Sometimes we seemed almost up to it, sometimes it disappeared in the darkness ahead, but it never left the track; some fascination kept it between the rails, running its wild race for life. The driver, with a keen eye ahead, gave the engine more and more steam, till our pace became terrific. Old No. 1 swayed to and fro like a ship in the storm, the bell rang out of its own accord as w T e rushed along through the night, each of us clinging to some object in whose stabilitywe had confidence.

And still that strange object kept ahead of us. Some one suggested'that it might have been a ghost luring us on to destruction, but the driver resolved, like Hamlet, to follow it, and probably make four ghosts where one would have done just as well. So he threw on all the steam the engine would take, and then we fairly flew over the track; onward, with the speed of the lightning and the roar of thunder, scattering fire in our wake and piercing the gloom ahead with our quivering headlight, while the shriek of the whistle startled the country for miles around. Now tearing through the forest, then rushing out into the open fields, and the swaying bell rang out a wild alarm as we sped onward through the night like a tornado. Suddenly Tom shouted out, “There’s the end of the track!’’ Instantly the engine was reversed, and old No. 1 ground and groaned in its efforts to stop. We stopped; that is, the engine stopped when it struck the boarding-house train,but induced us to perform the most brilliant doubld somersault act ever seen outside of a circus, and also knocked the headlight from the top of the cab, and as it lay on the ground we noticed some wet leaves sticking to the face of the lamp, and after some minute’s deep study we came to the conclusion that this accouted for the ghost on the track that we found it impossible to overtake. As we all stood around that flickering lamp we clasped hands and solemnly vowed never to let the outside world know of our midnight ride, I would never kave hinted about it were it not that I believe we beat the tjme of Jarrett & Palmer’s fast train.— Cor. Detroit Free Prm.