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Updated: May 25, 2025
"Amos," said Martin to the ex-engineer, "you try an' 'member all you forgot 'bout ingines in case anything happens to de crew o' dat steamer; an', Elisha, you want to keep good track o' where we go, so's you kin find you' way back." "I'll get the chronometer on deck now. I can take sights alone." They took the cable to the windlass-barrel and began to heave.
The feverish young innkeeper and ex-engineer started like Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's spear. "The meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place," said Venn, "and here we are we three." "We three?" said Wildeve, looking quickly round. "Yes; you, and I, and she. This is she." He held up the letter and parcel. Wildeve took them wonderingly. "I don't quite see what this means," he said.
Without stopping to look for a path, the ex-engineer flung himself at the steep hill-side, running, falling, clambering on hands and knees, bursting by main strength through the tangled thickets of young pines, and hurling himself blindly over loose-lying bowlders and the trunks of fallen trees.
The ex-engineer crawled cautiously to the edge of the barrier cliff, rubbed the sweat out of his smarting eyes, and peered down into the half-lighted shadows of the stockaded enclosure. It was not very long before he made them out two indistinct figures moving about among the disused and dilapidated ore sheds clustering at the track end of the old spur.
The team he was driving had once belonged to the Los Muertos stables and unguided as the horses were, they took the county road towards Derrick's ranch house. Dyke, all abroad, was unaware of the fact till, drawn by the smell of water, the horses halted by the trough in front of Caraher's saloon. The ex-engineer dismounted, looking about him, realising where he was.
Slab by slab the ex-engineer sought for his rat-hole, trying each one softly in its turn. When there remained but three more to be tugged at, the loosened one was found. Judson swung it cautiously aside and wriggled through the narrow aperture left by its removal.
"Say," he hazarded, "how about this? I make out "We've told you what our rates are, Mr. Dyke," exclaimed the clerk angrily. "That's all the arrangement we will make. Take it or leave it." He turned again to Genslinger, giving the ex-engineer his back. Dyke moved away and stood for a moment in the centre of the room, staring at the figures on the envelope.
But from their standpoint it was not piracy it was resistance to piracy; and when Amos, the ex-engineer, had stopped the engines and banked the fires, they announced to the captives bound to the rail that, with all due respect for the law, national and international, they would take that distressed steamboat into New York and deliver her to the authorities, with a claim for salvage.
This purpose was presently defeated in a most singular manner. At the end of one of the longer tunnel levels, a black and dripping cavern, lighted only by a single incandescent shining like a star imprisoned in the dismal depths, the ex-engineer saw what appeared to be a wooden bulkhead built across the passage and effectively blocking it.
To have the courage of a house-breaker, one must be a burglar in fact; and the ex-engineer knew how swiftly and certainly he would pay the penalty if any one had seen him climbing in at the forced window, or should chance to discover him now that he was in. But there was a stronger motive than fear, fear for himself, to set him groping for the telephone.
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