“I took Zonia and Marya over to our house. The old man and your father’s with them. They’ve a couple of shotguns and two revolvers. They’re all right.”
Vassar smiled grimly at the boy’s faith.
“Report to General Hood that I will reach Jamaica within six to eight hours and that he may expect twenty thousand men to be there before nine o’clock tonight. How’d you get here?”
“Hid my bicycle in Brooklyn and walked across the bridge.”
“I’ll follow suit. I know where I can put my hand on a good bicycle or two at the Athletic Club—”
Billy saluted and hurried on his mission.
At nine o’clock, the Jamaica terminal was jammed with forty thousand volunteers armed with every weapon conceivable, from a crowbar to a yacht cannon. A sailor had actually smuggled an old brass saluting piece into a ramshackled automobile and gotten into the station with it. These relics from the ark were left in the basement of the terminal.
General Hood had succeeded in getting sixty thousand rifles from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Governor’s Island, the Forts and one uncaptured armory in Brooklyn which the guns of the Pennsylvania had torn open and held until occupied by his troops.
All night the Volunteers from Brooklyn and New York streamed into Jamaica. Before daylight a hundred thousand men were struggling to board the trains for Southampton.
But fifty thousand were allowed to leave. There were no more guns. The remaining fifty thousand were held as reserves with such rude weapons as they possessed. Guards were placed defending the approaches to Brooklyn and New York and a camp established for drilling and training the new recruits into the semblance of an army.