he car after all," he said to
Fighting Dick, who was slowly coming to. But the sound of the explosion
of some of the boxes of cartridges in the uncoupled car made it fairly
certain that there wouldn't be much left to unload.

Five minutes later, after they had passed a dark station, the same
signal was noticed, and another car was uncoupled, and similarly one car
after another was left on the track. The guns and ammunition-boxes were
unloaded as expeditiously as possible and transferred to the wagons that
were waiting to receive them. The moment they were ready, the horses
galloped off as fast as they could go and disappeared in the darkness,
leaving the burning cars behind as a shining beacon.

When, on the morning of June ninth, a Japanese military train from
Portland traveled slowly along the line, it came first upon the ruins of
an engine which had been blown up by dynamite, and after that it was as
much as the Japanese could do to clear away the remnants of the various
ruined cars by the end of the day. The bridge, which had been set on
fire by a Japanese detachment with the help of several barrels of
petroleum, was completely burned down.

But the plot had been successful and Fighting Dick's fame resounded from
one ocean to the other, and proved to the nations across the sea that
the old energy of the American people had been revived and that the war
of extermination against the yellow race had begun, though as yet only
on a small scale. And the Japanese troops, too, began to appreciate that
the same irresistible force--a patriotic self-sacrifice that swept
everything before it--which had in one generation raised Japan to the
heights of political power, was now being directed against the foreign
invader.

Half the town had known of the plan for removing the rifles and
ammunition from Tacoma, but a strong self-control had taken the place of
the thoughtless garrulousness of former times. Not a sign, not a word
had betrayed the plot to the enemy; every man controlled his feverish
emotion and wore an air of stolid indifference. We had learned a lesson
from the enemy.

Fourteen Americans were captured with weapons in hand, and in addition
about twenty-eight badly wounded. The Japanese commander of Tacoma
issued a proclamation the following evening that all the prisoners,
without exception, would be tried by court-martial in the course of the
next day and condemned to death--the penalty that had been threatened in