Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/208

196 an epidemic, was that stage village from this swart, stark, sweaty, though colourful, mass of humanity. They were like worms in a fisherman's bait-can, or coagulated reptiles writhing in a noisome everglade. Perhaps, if someone had taken the bait-can and dumped the contents into one of the Five Boroughs, Carlotta would have sanctioned their existence. Her big city could do no wrong. Its great mantle can cover all ugliness and squalor.

"My Gawd, boys, why did you ever bring me from N'Yawk to this sink-hole!"

Phil jerked his arm from her. Now that half-Spanish girl (he mentally called the exotic beauty "a peach") who had looked back! Why—well—Carlotta bored him tonight. Pettishly he upbraided her:

"You make me sick, always grouching about something."

Stung by this slur, after all her patient devotion, the dancer retorted:

"You're the grouch with all that bad whiskey under your belt. You ought to go easy on the rotten stuff they ladle out here."

MacAllister was more worried about that peculiar flush on the boy's face than the whiskey. He knew the fevers that lurked in these luckless places. But his voice, the cool est thing in the panting town that night, soothed their irritation.

"Don't lose your nerve—we'll be off in the morning. There's more aurent gazooks in that island, my little babes in the wood, than your innocent hearts ever dreamed of."