was put in their way when they began to investigate.  The hour was too late:  could they not wait till daylight?  No?  Well, then, what was their authority?  When that was settled, it appeared that the skipper had mislaid his keys and could not produce the ship’s papers—­and so on.  By these devices the belief of the officers that they had caught the offender they were after was increasingly confirmed every minute, while several hours passed before they were allowed to realise that they had discovered a mare’s-nest.  For when at last they “would stand no more nonsense,” and had the hatches opened and the papers produced, the latter were quite in order, and the cargo—­which they wasted a little additional time in turning over—­contained nothing but coal.

Meantime the real business was proceeding twenty miles away.  All communications by wire from the three ports were blocked by “earthing” the wires, so as to cause short circuit.  The police and coast-guards were “peacefully picketed,” as trade unionists would call it, in their various barracks—­they were shut in and strongly guarded.  No conflict took place anywhere between the authorities and the volunteers, and the only casualty of any kind was the unfortunate death of one coast-guardsman from heart disease at Donaghadee.

At Larne, where much the largest portion of the Mountjoy’s cargo was landed, a triple cordon of Volunteers surrounded the town and harbour, and no one without a pass was allowed through.  The motors arrived with a punctuality that was wonderful, considering that many of them had come from long distances.  As the drivers arrived near the town and found themselves in an apparently endless procession of similar vehicles, their astonishment and excitement became intense.  Only when close to the harbour did they learn what they were there for, and received instructions how to proceed.  They had more than two hours to wait in drizzling rain before the Mountjoy appeared round the point of Islandmagee, although her approach had been made known to Spender by signal at dusk.  There were about five hundred motor vehicles assembled at Larne alone, and such an invasion of flaring head-lights gave the inhabitants of the little town unwonted excitement.  Practically all the able-bodied men of the place were either on duty as Volunteers or were willing workers in the landing of the arms.  The women stood at their doors and gave encouraging greeting to the drivers; many of them ran improvised canteens, which supplied the workers with welcome refreshments during the night.

There was a not unnatural tendency at first on the part of some of the motor-drivers to look upon the event more in the light of a meet of hounds than of the gravest possible business, and to hang about discussing the adventure with the other “sportsmen.”  But the use of vigorous language brought them back to recognition of the seriousness of the work before them, and the discharge of the cargo proceeded hour after hour with the utmost rapidity and with the regularity of a well-oiled machine.  The cars drew up beside the Mountjoy in an endless queue; each received its quota of bales according to its carrying capacity, and was despatched on its homeward journey without a moment’s delay.