Explore "Mr. Jervis, Volume I" by B. M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A hot moonless night towards the end of March, and the up-mail from Bombay to Calcutta has come to a standstill. The glare from the furnace and the carriage lamps lights up the ghostly looking telegraph-posts, the dusty cactus hedge, and illuminates a small portion of the surrounding jungle. Anxiously gazing eyes see no sign of a station, or even of a signalman's hut, within the immediate glare -- and beyond it there looms a rocky, barren tract, chiefly swallowed up in inscrutable darkness.
There is a babel of men's voices, shrill and emotional, and not emanating from European throats, a running of many feet, and above all is heard the snorting of the engine and the dismal shrieks of the steam whistle.