Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/137

 Ulloa and his men. They were carried to Puerto Locombia on the Santa Anna, secretly, in barrels that were labelled and invoiced as cement, so they could be shipped on to Guariqui without suspicion. But Ganley or the Junta or their spies got to know of it. The Santa Anna was scuttled in the roadstead at Puerto Locombia. Those cartridges went to the bottom—forty-six barrels with double heads, the heads holding a sprinkling of cement and the main space full of cartridges packed in excelsior. Every pound of it went down."

"This can't be true!" almost groaned the girl at his side.

"Every word of it's true. But let me go on. De Brigard and his men have been in almost as bad a predicament. This advantage was useless unless he had ammunition for his own men. That's where Ganley came in. His agents found that ground iron slag, packed in cases, weighed up to just about what a case of cartridges would. So they bought eighty-eight cases of iron slag from a Hudson River factory town and ferried it down to New York. It was consigned to Locombia, properly enough, as basic iron silicate for fluxing purposes. The law compels all such exporters to file with the port collector a distinct declaration of the goods shipped, the country shipped to, and the name of the consignee. This