us. Was Gallagher's engine still
on the rails?"

"It was."

Ford sat up and nursed his knees. "Dick will make a way if he can't find
one ready made. But it may take hours. Meanwhile, if these devils have
scouts out--"

"Yes?" said Adair.

"They'll bring the warning, and there won't be much more time wasted in
experiments. They can do us up, if they get right down to business."

"What are they doing now?" Adair asked of Brissac, who was on watch on
the commissary side.

"I'll be hanged if I know. It looks like a young cannon, and it's
pointed this way. By George! it's coming--coming by its all alone, too!"

By this time they were all watching the new menace. Brissac's
description fitted it accurately; a cylindrical object mounted upon a
pair of small wheels taken from the commissary store-room truck. It came
toward the Nadia by curious surges--a rush forward and a pause--trailing
what appeared to be a long iron rod behind it.

Ford hit upon the explanation. The cylindrical thing was another
gas-pipe bomb; the iron tail was a smaller pipe containing and armoring
the fuse, and serving also as the means of propulsion. They were
coupling on additional lengths of the fuse-carrying pipe as they were
needed; hence the jerking advances and pauses.

Adair's low laugh was as care-free as ever.

"A practical illustration of the tail wagging the dog," he remarked.
"But the dog will wag us good and plenty when they get him where they
want him. You can't fish that thing up through the hole with your
wire--or crop the tail."

"No; it's a run for it, this time," said Ford, rising and stripping his
coat.

But Brissac was pointing to three or four men dodging from shadow to
shadow under the masthead lights and circling wide to tighten the line
of circumvallation.

"We shan't run very far," he commented.

It seemed a hair-graying age to the watchers at the Nadia's windows
before the men behind the commissary barricade got their infernal
machine placed to their liking. They stared at it, all three of them,
fascinated, deaf and blind to all else. A minimized shudder as of
drumming wheels or escaping steam was in the air when they saw the flare
of the match that betokened the firing of the fuse, but no one of the
three heard it.

It was when the sputtering line of fire had buried itself in its tube
that they became suddenly alive to the unbelievable fact that a
locomotive was thundering down the yard on the Nadia's track.