'phone Benson at the yard office to couple them up
into one train, engine to the caboose in front, and send them out solid.
When they have cleared the danger limit, they can split up and take the
proper time intervals--ten minutes apart."

"Call it done," said the trainmaster, and he went to carry out the
order. Two minutes later Bogard, the night-relief operator off duty,
darted out of the despatcher's room with the clearance-cards for the
three sections. Lidgerwood stopped him in mid-flight.

"One second, Robert: when you have done your errand, come back to the
president's car, ask for Miss Brewster, and say that I sent you. Then
stay within call and be ready to do whatever she wants you to do."

Bogard did the first part of his errand swiftly, and he was taking the
duplicate signatures of the engineer and conductor of the third and last
section when Benson came up to put the solid-train order into effect.
The couplings were made deftly and without unnecessary stir. Then Benson
stepped back and gave the starting signal, twirling his lantern in rapid
circles. Synchronized as perfectly as if a single throttle-lever
controlled them all, the three heavy freight-pullers hissed, strained,
belched fire, and the long train began to move out.

It was Lidgerwood's challenge to the outlaws, and as if the blasts of
the three tearing exhausts had been the signal it was awaiting, the
strike storm broke with the suddenness and fury of a tropical hurricane.
From a hundred hiding-places in the car-strewn yard, men came running,
some to swarm thickly upon the moving engines and cabooses, others
swinging by the drawheads to cut the air-brake hose.

Benson was swept aside and overpowered before he could strike a blow.
Bogard, speeding across to take his post beside the _Nadia_, was struck
down before he could get clear of the pouring hornet swarm. Shots were
fired; shrill yells arose. Into the midst of the clamor the great siren
whistle at the shops boomed out the fire alarm, and almost at the the
same instant a red glow, capped by a rolling nimbus of sooty oil smoke,
rose to beacon the destruction already begun in the shop yards. And
while the roar of the siren was still jarring upon the windless night
air, the electric-light circuits were cut out, leaving the yards and the
Crow's Nest in darkness, and the frantic battle for the trains to be
lighted only by the moon and the lurid glow of destruction spreading
slowly under its black