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Apparently at last satisfied that the "operator" within was asleep at his post, the intruder turned about and threw a shaft of light up toward the wires of the loop. Expectantly Jack waited. Had he also guessed right here? But to his disappointment, after a brief debate with himself, the "ghost" muttered, "If he's asleep, what's the use?"
What was the secret of such a power? Even with all the modern appliances for conveying the will of a sovereign to-day, with railroads to carry his messengers and telegraph wires to convey his will, would it be conceivable to exert such an authority?
You see, where there weren't sliprails handy we'd just take the tomahawk and nick the top of a straight-grained fence-post, just above the mortise, knock out the wood there, lift the top rail out and down, and jump the horses in over the lower one it was all two-rail fences around there with sheep wires under the lower rail.
Alone in my corner seat I was rolled over the Trail of Beauty that the line of the Great Western follows. And I watched the telegraph wires switchbacking from post to post, as we sped along. When we steamed into Falmouth station, I easily distinguished Radley's majestic figure standing on the platform, with Doe actually hanging on his arm a thing I would never have dared to do.
They reached their trenches at last, pushed themselves along ditches too narrow to take simultaneously both them and their gear, cast loving epithets at telephone wires which caught their rifles, and waited interminable times for the man ahead to move on.
The talk went on for four solid hours vain, vapouring talk, during which steam was blown off. At the end the surrender, as Dawson predicted, was unconditional. That evening of the morrow a telegram sped away over the long wires to the south addressed to the Secretary of the Admiralty. "Please tell First Lord that the snake is dead. I am returning the Marines carriage-paid and undamaged.
Presently the trees ceased; and there before them the men saw a wide, cleared space, a hundred feet of empty land between the woods and a tall, stout fence topped with live wires and with numerous incandescents. "Nice place to tackle, if anybody were left to defend it!" commented Bohannan. None of the others answered.
The black silhouettes of the men, who were tossing long boards and bags of earth on top of the wires, stood out sharply against the light of the explosives with which the Americans were attempting to loosen the supporting posts. The light of the dancing flames fell on swaying, leaping figures.
"The caution was well timed, for we had not noticed the four telegraph wires which we rapidly approached. We energetically ducked our heads on seeing them, but fortunately we escaped any more damage than having two or three of our ropes cut. These we continued to drag after us like the tail of a ragged comet, having the telegraph-wires and the posts which lately supported them attached to us."
We looked upon them and we laughed and said: "Fear nothing, our brothers. There is a great power in these wires, but this power is tamed. It is yours. We give it to you." Still they would not move. "We give you the power of the sky!" we cried. "We give you the key to the earth! Take it, and let us be one of you, the humblest among you.
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