Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/222

210 "Here—you! Go below and fix your patient. If you try any dirty work, you'll sail with us—in bracelets."

Wincing at the clinking handcuffs, this poltroon of a practitioner scuffled, or rather slid below, and after testing pulse, forehead, and throat, and snapping out a few questions, took from his case a bottle of powders.

"Try it yourself," the gambler ordered.

The other protested, with a sputtering of oaths and angry gestures, replaced the bottle, and took out others, which he tasted.

"I thought so, you weasel. Now leave those bottles here and give the directions, pronto."

Again he obeyed, and they climbed the companionway.

Steam was curling from the funnels. From off-shore came a native row-boat. In the prow stood a pompous pot-bellied individual in a braided uniform and queer visored red hat with a cockade. This tuppeny official waved a sword in one hand and gesticulated with the other. Two brown soldiers with rifles sat in the stern.

"What'd I tell you?" growled Pete. "Them theatre-sojers is going to subpeeny us."

The chains rattled through the hawser-holes; up came the anchor; the screw churned the water under her stern; and the yacht glided on her way.

The town with its sin and squalor had been sinister and tragic enough the night before, and in it still lurked cutthroats worthy of fear, but the officialdom of the port was as ineffectual and comic as the cast of any slapstick opera-bouffé of the nineties.