y 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, Mac