On
every side one heard the regular hammering on the armored ground,
piercing whistles, the ringing of warning bells, the solid metallic
crash of the colossal cubes telescoping their steel stumps, with the
counter-blows of chains and the rattle of the long carcases'
vertebrae. On the ground floor of the building that arises in the
middle of the station like a town ball, the hurried bell of
telegraph and telephone was at work, punctuated by vocal noises. All
about on the dusty ground were the goods sheds, the low stores
through whose doors one could dimly see the stacked interiors--the
pointsmen's cabins, the bristling switches, the hydrants, the
latticed iron posts whose wires ruled the sky like music-paper; here
and there the signals, and rising naked over this flat and gloomy
city, two steam cranes, like steeples.
Farther away, on waste ground and vacant sites in the environs of
the labyrinth of platforms and buildings, military carts and lorries
were standing idle, and rows of horses, drawn out farther than one
could see.
"Talk about the job this is going to be!"--"A whole army corps
beginning to entrain this evening!"--"Tiens, they're coming now!"
A cloud which overspread a noisy vibration of wheels and the rumble
of horses' hoofs was coming near and getting bigger in the approach
to the station formed by converging buildings.
"There are already some guns on board." On some flat trucks down
there, between two long pyramidal dumps of chests, we saw indeed the
outline of wheels, and some slender muzzles.
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