Book V - Page 2

even
excited, as he told me of her:

"She is the last word in naval construction--a torpedo yacht. A
small cruiser, with turbines up to date, oil-fuelled, and fully armed
with the latest and most perfect weapons and explosives of all kinds.
The fastest boat afloat to-day. Built by Thorneycroft, engined by
Parsons, armoured by Armstrong, armed by Crupp. 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. Rooke had picked them
separately, and in the doing had used well his great experience of
both men and adventurous life. These men were to form part of the
armoured yacht's crew when she should come into the Mediterranean
waters. They and the priests and fighting-men in the Castle worked
well together, and with a zeal that was beyond praise. The heavy
cases seemed almost of their own accord to leave the holds, so fast
came the procession of them along the gangways from deck to dock-
wall. It was a part of my design that the arms should be placed in
centres ready for local distribution. In such a country as this,
without railways or even roads, the distribution of war material in
any quantity is a great labour, for it has to be done individually,
or at least from centres.

But of this work the great number of mountaineers who were arriving
made little