Adventure, December 1914 — page 36: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 At once a score of men sprang from the hold of the ship, as if by magic. One by one the cases were loaded. The men were working feverishly by the light of battle- lanterns—big lamps with reflectors so placed as to throw the light exactly where it was needed and nowhere else. They were taking aboard the Arroyo dozens of coffin- like wooden cases and bags and boxes, small- er and even heavier. Silently and swiftly they toiled. It was risky work, too, at night and in the tense haste. Once there was a muttered exclamation. A heavy case had dropped. A man had gone down with a broken leg. It was a common thing with the gun-runners. They expected it. The victim of such an accident could not be sent to a hospital ashore. He was carried, as gently as the rough hands of the men could carry any- thing, to one side where he lay silently waiting for the ship’s surgeon who had been engaged for just such an emergency. ‘There was no whimper. Scarcely a fraction of a minute had been lost. The last cases in this load had been taken aboard, and the tug was crawling up to make fast and tow the ship out into the stream the moment the next consignment arrived and was loaded. Already the trucks were vanishing, empty, one by one, in the misty darkness, as muffled as they came, going back for the last load. “Come,” cried Burke, springing out of the shadow of the warehouse where we had been crouching. ‘‘We shall catch them at both ends—on the ship and at their store- house.” He had leaped up on a pile of timber alongside the dock and was blowing shrilly on his police-whistle. A ~SUDDENLY lights flashed through 4 the fog on the river. There was the Patrol shooting out from a bank of fog that swirled around a slip several piers away and ranging up alongside of the Ar- royo before it had a chance to make a get- away. All was excitement, shouts, muttered imprecations ‘“‘___ them—they’ve put one across on us!”’ shouted some one on the ship. ‘‘We can leave them to the police,’’ cried Burke, hurrying us now along the street in the direction of the trucks, going for their second load. ‘I want Morelos.” Adventure It had all happened so suddenly that the gun-runners had no chance to cover up their retreat. As we ran down the street we could see the trucks standing before a build- ing on. the block above the dingy café in which we had first seen the plotters. Without pausing, Kennedy and Burke dashed up to the door, while from the direction of the ferry we could hear a couple of policemen hurrying toward us. We en- tered unopposed. The conspirators had taken to their heels at the first sounds of ee whistle and the blasts of the police- Oat. i Sie IT WAS a ramshackle building to Mis es which we came, reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when no subsidy or free tolls were necessary for the American merchantmen who flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven seas. On the ground-floor was an apparently innocent junk-dealer’s shop, in reality the meeting-place of those whom we had been seeking. By an outside stairway the lofts above were reached, hiding their secrets be- hind windows opaque with decades of dust. It was really a perfect arsenal and maga- zine into which we entered. The long room was dusty and cobwebbed, crammed with stands of arms, tents, uniforms in bales, batteries of Maxims and mountain- guns and all the paraphernalia for carrying on twentieth century guerrilla warfare. As we reached the top of the steps, Burke ground out anoath. The loft was deserted. A moment later he had sprung down the steps again, and, joined by the policemen who had answered his call, made a dash into the café in the back room of which we had seen Morelos. Kennedy, however, did not follow, for in the light of a dim oil-lamp he had seen that this was the real secret meeting-place of the Revolutionist junta. Itwas achance not to be missed and he lost no time in rummaging through the warlike paraphernalia in search of anything that might lend a clue to the cases which had brought us into this strange adventure. : Far in the rear of the loft, underneath some old and dirty tarpaulins, he at last unearthed a letter-file and carried it closer to the light. ‘This will interest Burke,” he exclaimed, comicloook C©