The Mercy of the Lord

Craddock was polishing the brass of his safety valve and singing the while at high pressure between set teeth: his choice of a ditty determined by one of his transitory lapses into conventional righteousness. The cause of which in the present instance being an equally transient admiration for a good little Eurasian girl fresh from her convent. As the sun--which shines equally on the just and the unjust--flamed on his red face and glowed from his corn-coloured beard it seemed to me--waiting in the comparative coolth of the pointsman's mud-oven shelter till the one mail train of the day should appear and disappear, leaving the ribbon of rail which spanned the desert world to its horizon free for our passaging--that both he and his engine radiated heat: that they gave out--as the burning bush or the flaming swords of the paradise-protectors must have given out--a message of fiery warning that suited the words he sang: "Eplants 'isfootsteps--inthesea." Craddock punctuated the rhythm with an appropriate stop of shrill steam which ought to have startled me: but it did not, because my outward senses had suddenly become slaves to my memory. The desert was a garden full of cool fragrance which comes with the close of an Indian day, and the only sound to be heard in it was a glad young voice repeating these words: