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Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original.
(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS
LIFE'S HANDICAP; Being Stories of Mine Own People
SOLDIERS THREE, THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS, and IN BLACK AND WHITE
UNDER THE DEODARS, THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW and WEE WILLIE WINKIE
[Illustration: "A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS, SHOUTING THAT HE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP HIS RAY."]
(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)
BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER AND H. REUTERDAHL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, BY RUDYARD KIPLING PUBLISHED, MARCH, 1909
REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OF THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY
"A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his Ray" _Frontispiece_
"Slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her" 31
At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of one of the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close as herrings in the long gray under-bodies which our G. P. O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were filled as I watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully learned official--Mr. L. L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He introduces me to the Captain of "162"--Captain Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and aëronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, from L. V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space.