Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/136

124 So, not finding any help from his companions, the tattered figure rose, and looked up and down the sands. The life-guards had disappeared, but over by the creek a little man was jerkily zigzagging his way, whistling determinedly the while, in staccato fashion, as if he had all the time in the world but was of too nervous an organization to know what to do with it.

As he neared the Light, he was hailed by a chorus of shrieks and barks, and the quaint jabberings of a tongue which he decided, after much speculation, was human.

"Holy cats!" said he, "did my ticket read New Jersey or the Spanish Main?"

The colourful figure was extending a bottle and a piece of bark, and saying something that sounded like:

"Bona dias, señor, you reeda da Ingleese?"

Before the bottle, the newcomer held up his hands in the holiest of horrors.

"On the wagon, don't tempt me!" he wailed, then, glancing down at the bark,—"No thanks, none of your yellow sheets. If you see it in the Star, it's so!"

Now, Butts was a little of a reporter, with restless eyes constantly asking questions, and a glib tongue that bombarded his victims with more—in fact so many that he never stopped for the answers, merely substituting for them his own preconceptions, which usually happened to be shrewd enough to keep his chief out of libel suits. He was too good a newspaper man, and too curious, to ignore a rival sheet, so after all he extended his hand.

"Here, old top, let's see your three star extra—and what