Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/307

 has been kept shut; and the United Fruit Concern's track-motor has been kept there waiting. They have divided the eighty-eight boxes into two lots. They intend to take out only one-half of the shipment to-night. I counted the boxes from under the life-boat. Forty—three were left; that means they are taking off forty-ﬁve.”

"That means almost three hundred thousand rounds of ammunition!" she exclaimed, with a little hopeless gesture of the hands.

"The Remington rifles, of course, they can't touch. The forty-ﬁve boxes, I imagine, have completely loaded the body of their car, ﬁlled it up!"

"But what are we to do?"

He looked at her, and laughed a little, recklessly.

"They have to run those boxes of slag out through Puerto Locombia to De Brigard's headquarters to-night. They have to get them out there quietly, very quietly. The track, doubtless, has been cleared for them. It has to be cleared for them, for even an eighty-horse-power motor can't side-track an ore-train or switch a string of banana-cars. And there is no longer any telegraph between this port and the inland points they have to pass.”

"No, there is no telegraph," she said, still at sea.