ne, 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
cautiousl