And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite son.Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary manner.
On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute, and they left exactly on time.As never before in the history of any Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent.
She placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest.If he walked back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness.He made his way from tie to tie only by feeling with his foot.After an hour he came to a shed.Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he did not know, and he never did know.He was too tired, too hot, and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or daylight.So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable.From its black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss.There was not a sound or sign of human habitation.The silence was the silence of the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing himself between its sheets.But now how gladly would he welcome it! For, in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species.Here his companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely surrounded by alligators."And then he found he was not alone.
In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him there flashed suddenly the face of a man.Then the match went out and the face with it.David noted that it had appeared at some height above the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the embankment.It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a tree.David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been a wharf.He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an ocean-going tug.It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his pipe, had shown his face.At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.He advanced quickly.And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt.No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house.Her decks were empty.
But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose.David stood uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to the loneliness of the shed.The question was decided for him.He had not considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him.As one who means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily.He wore high boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero.He was a little man, but his movements were alert and active.To David he seemed unnecessarily excited.
He thrust himself close against David.
"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug."How'd you get here?""I walked," said David.
"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly."They put me off about a mile below here.I walked back to this flag station.I'm going to wait here for the next train north."The little man laughed mockingly.
"Oh, no you're not," he said."If you walked here, you can just walk away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory gesture.
"You walk!" he commanded.
"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the tug.
"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called."You WAIT, that's all, you WAIT!"David decided not to wait.It was possible the wharf was private property and he had been trespassing.In any case, at the flag station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to choose his own battle-ground.He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed.Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person.
"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers.
They're certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence of a perfectly harmless stranger?"Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
"I wish that train would come," he sighed.And instantly? as though in answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard the rumble and creak of approaching cars.In a flash David planned his course of action.
