ell
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 engi