If she ever comes into action, it will be bad for her opponent, for she need not fear to tackle anything less than a _Dreadnought_." He also told me that from the same Government, whose nation had just established an unlooked-for peace, he had also purchased a whole park of artillery of the very latest patterns, and that for range and accuracy the guns were held to be supreme.

These would follow before long, and with them their proper ammunition, with a shipload of the same to follow shortly after.
When he had told me all the rest of his news, and handed me the accounts, we went out to the dock to see the debarkation of the war material.
Knowing that it was arriving, I had sent word in the afternoon to the mountaineers to tell them to come and remove it.

They had answered the call, and it really seemed to me that the whole of the land must that night have been in motion.
They came as individuals, grouping themselves as they came within the defences of the Castle; some had gathered at fixed points on the way.
They went secretly and in silence, stealing through the forests like ghosts, each party when it grouped taking the place of that which had gone on one of the routes radiating round Vissarion.

Their coming and going was more than ghostly.

It was, indeed, the outward manifestation of an inward spirit--a whole nation dominated by one common purpose.
The men in the steamer were nearly all engineers, mostly British, well conducted, and to be depended upon.