XI

There was no chance for Clay to speak to Hope again, though he felt the

cruelty of having to leave her with everything between them in this

interrupted state. But their friends stood about her, interested and

excited over this expedition of smuggled arms, unconscious of the great

miracle that had come into his life and of his need to speak to and to

touch the woman who had wrought it. Clay felt how much more binding

than the laws of life are the little social conventions that must be

observed at times, even though the heart is leaping with joy or racked

with sorrow. He stood within a few feet of the woman he loved, wanting

to cry out at her and to tell her all the wonderful things which he had

learned were true for the first time that night, but he was forced

instead to keep his eyes away from her face and to laugh and answer

questions, and at the last to go away content with having held her hand

for an instant, and to have heard her say "good-luck."

MacWilliams called Kirkland to the office at the other end of the

Company's wire, and explained the situation to him. He was instructed

to run an engine and freight-cars to a point a quarter of a mile north

of the fort, and to wait there until he heard a locomotive whistle or

pistol shots, when he was to run on to the fort as quickly and as

noiselessly as possible. He was also directed to bring with him as

many of the American workmen as he could trust to keep silent

concerning the events of the evening. At ten o'clock MacWilliams had

the steam up in a locomotive, and with his only passenger-car in the

rear, ran it out of the yard and stopped the train at the point nearest

the cars where ten of the 'Vesta's' crew were waiting. The sailors had

no idea as to where they were going, or what they were to do, but the

fact that they had all been given arms filled them with satisfaction,

and they huddled together at the bottom of the car smoking and

whispering, and radiant with excitement and satisfaction.

The train progressed cautiously until it was within a half mile below

the fort, when Clay stopped it, and, leaving two men on guard, stepped

off the remaining distance on the ties, his little band following

noiselessly behind him like a procession of ghosts in the moonlight.

They halted and listened from time to time as they drew near the ruins,

but there was no sound except the beating of the waves on the rocks and

the rustling of the sea-breeze through the vines and creepers about

them.

Clay motioned to the men to sit down, and, beckoning to MacWilliams,

directed him to go on ahead and reconnoitre.

"If you fire we will come up," he said. "Get back here as soon as you

can."

"Aren't you going to make sure first that Kirkland is on the other side

of the fort?" MacWilliams whispered.

Clay replied that he was certain Kirkland had already arrived. "He had

a shorter run than ours, and he wired you he was ready to start when we

were, didn't he?" MacWilliams nodded.

"Well, then, he is there. I can count on Kirk."

MacWilliams pulled at his heavy boots and hid them in the bushes, with

his helmet over them to mark the spot. "I feel as though I was going

to rob a bank," he chuckled, as he waved his hand and crept off into

the underbrush.

For the first few moments the men who were left behind sat silent, but

as the minutes wore on, and MacWilliams made no sign, they grew

restless, and shifted their positions, and began to whisper together,

until Clay shook his head at them, and there was silence again until

one of them, in trying not to cough, almost strangled, and the others

tittered and those nearest pummelled him on the back.

Clay pulled out his revolver, and after spinning the cylinder under his

finger-nail, put it back in its holder again, and the men, taking this

as an encouraging promise of immediate action, began to examine their

weapons again for the twentieth time, and there was a chorus of short,

muffled clicks as triggers were drawn back and cautiously lowered and

levers shot into place and caught again.

One of the men farthest down the track raised his arm, and all turned

and half rose as they saw MacWilliams coming toward them on a run,

leaping noiselessly in his stocking feet from tie to tie. He dropped

on his knees between Clay and Langham.

"The guns are there all right," he whispered, panting, "and there are

only three men guarding them. They are all sitting on the beach

smoking. I hustled around the fort and came across the whole outfit in

the second gallery. It looks like a row of coffins, ten coffins and

about twenty little boxes and kegs. I'm sure that means they are

coming for them to-night. They've not tried to hide them nor to cover

them up. All we've got to do is to walk down on the guards and tell

them to throw up their hands. It's too easy."

Clay jumped to his feet. "Come on," he said.

"Wait till I get my boots on first," begged MacWilliams. "I wouldn't

go over those cinders again in my bare feet for all the buried treasure

in the Spanish Main. You can make all the noise you want; the waves

will drown it."

With MacWilliams to show them the way, the men scrambled up the outer

wall of the fort and crossed the moss-covered ramparts at the run.

Below them, on the sandy beach, were three men sitting around a

driftwood fire that had sunk to a few hot ashes. Clay nodded to

MacWilliams. "You and Ted can have them," he said. "Go with him,

Langham."

The sailors levelled their rifles at the three lonely figures on the

beach as the two boys slipped down the wall and fell on their hands and

feet in the sand below, and then crawled up to within a few feet of

where the men were sitting.

As MacWilliams raised his revolver one of the three, who was cooking

something over the fire, raised his head and with a yell of warning

flung himself toward his rifle.

"Up with your hands!" MacWilliams shouted in Spanish, and Langham,

running in, seized the nearest sentry by the neck and shoved his face

down between his knees into the sand.

There was a great rattle of falling stones and of breaking vines as the

sailors tumbled down the side of the fort, and in a half minute's time

the three sentries were looking with angry, frightened eyes at the

circle of armed men around them.

"Now gag them," said Clay. "Does anybody here know how to gag a man?"

he asked. "I don't."

"Better make him tell what he knows first," suggested Langham.

But the Spaniards were too terrified at what they had done, or at what

they had failed to do, to further commit themselves.

"Tie us and gag us," one of them begged. "Let them find us so. It is

the kindest thing you can do for us."

"Thank you, sir," said Clay. "That is what I wanted to know. They are

coming to-night, then. We must hurry."

The three sentries were bound and hidden at the base of the wall, with

a sailor to watch them. He was a young man with a high sense of the

importance of his duties, and he enlivened the prisoners by poking them

in the ribs whenever they moved.

Clay deemed it impossible to signal Kirkland as they had arranged to

do, as they could not know now how near those who were coming for the

arms might be. So MacWilliams was sent back for his engine, and a few

minutes later they heard it rumble heavily past the fort on its way to

bring up Kirkland and the flat cars. Clay explored the lower chambers

of the fort and found the boxes as MacWilliams had described them. Ten

men, with some effort, could lift and carry the larger coffin-shaped

boxes, and Clay guessed that, granting their contents to be rifles,

there must be a hundred pieces in each box, and that there were a

thousand rifles in all.

They had moved half of the boxes to the side of the track when the

train of flat cars and the two engines came crawling and twisting

toward them, between the walls of the jungle, like a great serpent,

with no light about it but the glow from the hot ashes as they fell

between the rails. Thirty men, equally divided between Irish and

negroes, fell off the flat cars before the wheels had ceased to

revolve, and, without a word of direction, began loading the heavy

boxes on the train and passing the kegs of cartridges from hand to hand

and shoulder to shoulder. The sailors spread out up the road that led

to the Capital to give warning in case the enemy approached, but they

were recalled before they had reason to give an alarm, and in a half

hour Burke's entire shipment of arms was on the ore-cars, the men who

were to have guarded them were prisoners in the cab of the engine, and

both trains were rushing at full speed toward the mines. On arriving

there Kirkland's train was switched to the siding that led to the

magazine in which was stored the rack-arock and dynamite used in the

blasting. By midnight all of the boxes were safely under lock in the

zinc building, and the number of the men who always guarded the place

for fear of fire or accident was doubled, while a reserve, composed of

Kirkland's thirty picked men, were hidden in the surrounding houses and

engine-sheds.

Before Clay left he had one of the boxes broken open, and found that it

held a hundred Mannlicher rifles.

"Good!" he said. "I'd give a thousand dollars in gold if I could bring

Mendoza out here and show him his own men armed with his own

Mannlichers and dying for a shot at him. How old Burke will enjoy this

when he hears of it!"

The party from the Palms returned to their engine after many promises

of reward to the men for their work "over-time," and were soon flying

back with their hearts as light as the smoke above them.

MacWilliams slackened speed as they neared the fort, and moved up

cautiously on the scene of their recent victory, but a warning cry from

Clay made him bring his engine to a sharp stop. Many lights were

flashing over the ruins and they could see in their reflection the

figures of men running over the same walls on which the lizards had

basked in undisturbed peace for years.

"They look like a swarm of hornets after some one has chucked a stone

through their nest," laughed MacWilliams. "What shall we do now? Go

back, or wait here, or run the blockade?"

"Oh, ride them out," said Langham; "the family's anxious, and I want to

tell them what's happened. Go ahead."

Clay turned to the sailors in the car behind them. "Lie down, men," he

said. "And don't any of you fire unless I tell you to. Let them do

all the shooting. This isn't our fight yet, and, besides, they can't

hit a locomotive standing still, certainly not when it's going at full

speed."

"Suppose they've torn the track up?" said MacWilliams, grinning. "We'd

look sort of silly flying through the air."

"Oh, they've not sense enough to think of that," said Clay. "Besides,

they don't know it was we who took their arms away, yet."

MacWilliams opened the throttle gently, and the train moved slowly

forward, gaining speed at each revolution of the wheels.

As the noise of its approach beat louder and louder on the air, a yell

of disappointed rage and execration rose into the night from the fort,

and a mass of soldiers swarmed upon the track, leaping up and down and

shaking the rifles in their hands.

"That sounds a little as though they thought we had something to do

with it," said MacWilliams, grimly. "If they don't look out some one

will get hurt."

There was a flash of fire from where the mass of men stood, followed by

a dozen more flashes, and the bullets rattled on the smokestack and

upon the boiler of the engine.

"Low bridge," cried MacWilliams, with a fierce chuckle. "Now, watch

her!"

He threw open the throttle as far as it would go, and the engine

answered to his touch like a race-horse to the whip. It seemed to

spring from the track into the air. It quivered and shook like a live

thing, and as it shot in between the soldiers they fell back on either

side, and MacWilliams leaned far out of his cab-window shaking his fist

at them.

"You got left, didn't you?" he shouted. "Thank you for the

Mannlichers."

As the locomotive rushed out of the jungle, and passed the point on the

road nearest to the Palms, MacWilliams loosened three long triumphant

shrieks from his whistle and the sailors stood up and cheered.

"Let them shout," cried Clay. "Everybody will have to know now. It's

begun at last," he said, with a laugh of relief.

"And we took the first trick," said MacWilliams, as he ran his engine

slowly into the railroad yard.

The whistles of the engine and the shouts of the sailors had carried

far through the silence of the night, and as the men came hurrying

across the lawn to the Palms, they saw all of those who had been left

behind grouped on the veranda awaiting them.

"Do the conquering heroes come?" shouted King.

"They do," young Langham cried, joyously. "We've got all their arms,

and they shot at us. We've been under fire!"

"Are any of you hurt?" asked Miss Langham, anxiously, as she and the

others hurried down the steps to welcome them, while those of the

'Vesta's' crew who had been left behind looked at their comrades with

envy.

"We have been so frightened and anxious about you," said Miss Langham.

Hope held out her hand to Clay and greeted him with a quiet, happy

smile, that was in contrast to the excitement and confusion that

reigned about them.

"I knew you would come back safely," she said. And the pressure of her

hand seemed to add "to me."