On this June night, the Great Brakeman, whom, had they deified any
one, they might well have chosen as their celestial protagonist, had
ordained that the seven o'clock train should leave its human (or
inhuman) deposit at Fish. At two minutes after seven Percy Washington
and John T. Unger disembarked, hurried past the spellbound, the agape,
the fearsome eyes of the twelve men of Fish, mounted into a buggy
which had obviously appeared from nowhere, and drove away.
After half an hour, when the twilight had coagulated into dark, the
silent negro who was driving the buggy hailed an opaque body somewhere
ahead of them in the gloom. In response to his cry, it turned upon
them a luminous disc which regarded them like a malignant eye out of
the unfathomable night. As they came closer, John saw that it was the
tail-light of an immense automobile, larger and more magnificent than
any he had ever seen. Its body was of gleaming metal richer than
nickel and lighter than silver, and the hubs of the wheels were
studded with iridescent geometric figures of green and yellow--John
did not dare to guess whether they were glass or jewel.
Two negroes, dressed in glittering livery such as one sees in pictures
of royal processions in London, were standing at attention beside the
car and, as the two young men dismounted from the buggy, they were
greeted in some language which the guest could not understand, but
which seemed to be an extreme form of the Southern negro's dialect.
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