“I can see my mistake now, though I believe that is the richest deposit I have, and I shall sometime make something out of it. I am going to get a cargo from the bed nearest to the railroad and get the company to freight it for me to the seaboard.”
“Then I shall see you occasionally, Jack.”
“Oh, yes. I shall not be far away.”
Jack was as good as his word, and the following day Plum Plucky proudly took his place as engineer, with a new fireman to help him.
Jack then began to carry out his scheme of getting a cargo of nitrate to his native land.
This time he obtained his supply of nitrate from a bed less than ten miles from the railroad, drawing it to the station with ox teams. With his better knowledge of the country he met with success in this part of the undertaking, and then the train carried it to the sea-coast for him at moderate rates.
Before this had been done he had bargained with a Peruvian captain of a merchantman to carry the cargo to Philadelphia.
This had proved the most difficult part of his arrangements, for with the existing war between the countries it was sometime before he could find a man willing to do it.
But he found one at last and the nitrate was eventually loaded on the vessel.
It was a proud, and yet an anxious, moment for Jack when he found everything in readiness to leave the harbor.