Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
Langham looked out to find Clay and MacWilliams knee-deep in the running water, with their shoulders against the muddy wheels, and the driver lashing at the horses and dragging at their bridles. He sprang out to their assistance, and Hope, shaking off her sister's detaining hands, jumped out after him, laughing.
MacWilliams called Kirkland to the office at the other end of the Company's wire, and explained the situation to him. He was instructed to run an engine and freight-cars to a point a quarter of a mile north of the fort, and to wait there until he heard a locomotive whistle or pistol shots, when he was to run on to the fort as quickly and as noiselessly as possible.
The two younger men looked up at him anxiously, but before he could answer, the instrument began to tick out the signal, and they turned their eyes to it again, and one of them began to take its message down on paper. The instrument spoke to MacWilliams also, for he was used to sending telegrams daily from the office to the mines, and could make it talk for him in either English or Spanish.
I'll pack the whole lot of you back to New York on the first steamer, if I want to, and I'll give you such characters that you'll be glad to get a job carrying a transit. You're in no position to talk of resigning yet not one of you. Yes," he added, interrupting himself, "one of you is MacWilliams, the man who had charge of the railroad. It's no fault of his that the road's not working.
The lieutenants thanked him effusively and galloped away, radiant at the success of their mission, and Clay entered the office where MacWilliams was telegraphing his orders to Kirkland. He seated himself beside the instrument, and from time to time answered the questions Kirkland sent back to him over the wire, and in the intervals of silence thought of Hope.
For the first few moments the men who were left behind sat silent, but as the minutes wore on, and MacWilliams made no sign, they grew restless, and shifted their positions, and began to whisper together, until Clay shook his head at them, and there was silence again until one of them, in trying not to cough, almost strangled, and the others tittered and those nearest pummelled him on the back.
She wondered if he disapproved of her riding on the engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing through the mines on her pony, and spearing with a lance of sugar-cane at the mongrel curs that ran to snap at his flanks. She remembered his look of astonished amusement the day he had caught her in this impromptu pig-sticking, and she felt herself growing red at the recollection.
So the new arrivals sat rather silently under the shed of the levee on a row of cotton-bales, while Clay and MacWilliams raced off after the carriages. "I wish we didn't have to keep the hood down," young Langham said, anxiously, as they at last proceeded heavily up the muddy streets; "it makes it so hot, and you can't see anything.
He was also directed to bring with him as many of the American workmen as he could trust to keep silent concerning the events of the evening. At ten o'clock MacWilliams had the steam up in a locomotive, and with his only passenger-car in the rear, ran it out of the yard and stopped the train at the point nearest the cars where ten of the 'Vesta's' crew were waiting.
But Clay and MacWilliams said it concerned no one why he was there, and then emphasized the remark by picking a quarrel with a man who had given an unpleasant reason for it. Stuart, so far as they were concerned, could do no wrong. The dinner went off very well, and the President consented to dine with them in a week, on the invitation of young Langham to meet his father.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking