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One day there was a Big Game shoot to which my father had been invited as he was well known as a fine shot. Preparations had been going on for some time, but my sister and I knew nothing of the great day which came and went without our small world within the camp being disturbed. As we travelled about the country with my father on his tours, the camps – expertly erected and struck by a staff of Indians paid and employed by the government – were considerable affairs and housed some fifty engineers and others who like us were members of the families of the higher paid technicians. Being of the ‘Chief's’ entourage, my mother, sister and self were like local insignificant royalty. There were no other children so one or other of the temporarily unemployed Indians was usually told to keep an eye on us so we did not stray.
The hunt was on my birthday, the day for which my electric train was designed. It was unwrapped by me and after much fumbling it stood revealed. It was a beauty – a model of one of the latest London trains, perhaps even of the first London electric train. In a fever of excitement not, I was pleased to note, shared by my sister, it was set up, the battery fixed and the motor set off with a slight push from my father's finger.
That initial jolt was the highest speed it ever achieved. As I watched the miserable crawl I tried to see it devouring the miles in its headlong rush through space; I might even have succeeded if it had not, like my tank many years later, stopped. It just stopped.
“It's stopped?” I said inquiringly. My father was as upset as I was. He picked it up and examined it. I watched his face, and as I watched I could see from his expression that it had indeed stopped. My sister, who was being taught to read by Mother, came to life. “Full top?”