ice, telegraph-office, and canteen, and only connected with the
living world of men and ideas by two parallel iron streaks, three feet
six inches apart, growing dim and narrower in a long perspective
until they were twisted and blurred by the mirage and vanished in the
indefinite distance.

Every morning in the remote nothingness there appeared a black speck
growing larger and clearer, until with a whistle and a welcome clatter,
amid the aching silence of ages, the 'material' train arrived, carrying
its own water and 2,500 yards of rails, sleepers, and accessories. At
noon came another speck, developing in a similar manner into a
supply train, also carrying its own water, food and water for the
half-battalion of the escort and the 2,000 artificers and platelayers,
and the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda-water,
and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without
discomfort. And presently the empty trains would depart, reversing the
process of their arrival, and vanishing gradually along a line which
appeared at last to turn up into the air and run at a tangent into an
unreal world.

The life of the strange and lonely town was characterised by a
machine-like regularity, born perhaps of the iron road from which it
derived its nourishment. Daily at three o'clock in the morning the
'camp-engine' started with the 'bank parties.' With the dawn the
'material' train arrived, the platelaying gangs swarmed over it like
clusters of flies, and were carried to the extreme limit of the track.
Every man knew his task, and knew, too, that he would return to camp
when it was finished, and not before. Forthwith they set busily to
work without the necessity of an order. A hundred yards of material was
unloaded. The sleepers were arranged in a long succession. The rails
were spiked to every alternate sleeper, and then the great 80-ton engine
moved cautiously forward along the unballasted track, like an elephant
trying a doubtful bridge. The operation was repeated continually through
the hours of the burning day. Behind the train there followed other
gangs of platelayers, who completed the spiking and ballasting process;
and when the sun sank beneath the sands of the western horizon, and the
engine pushed the empty trucks and the weary men home to the Railhead
camp, it came back over a finished and permanent line. There was a brief
interval while the camp-fires twinkled in the waste, like the lights
of a li