Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/251

239 As they passed around the corner of the wall, very cautiously, the brim of a high-crowned panama, a swarthy forehead, and a pair of glittering eyes, looked over the window-ledge from which they had just leaped.

Curving in and out to avoid the worm-like snarls of naked bodies, on they ran. Once Pierre's heavy foot crunched the emaciated foreleg of some crouching cur, whose yelp of pain awoke a chorus of sympathetic howls, starting the sluggish sleepers to their feet, and causing the pursuers streaming from the gate-way of the inn, to pause and cross themselves shudderingly.

A half-mile south, they left the squalid street, curving down a lane at whose foot lay a wharf, with a launch moored alongside.

"It has not changed at all, the place," said Pierre's employer as the engine started sparking, and a rod of water showed clear between their stern and the wharf, "Everyone leaves the Café of Many Tongues quicklyéor not at all."

They glided over the sailless roadstead, past the funny little fort, dignified now into a lovely picturesqueness by the rising moon, and slipped out of the harbour. With the moon, the wind and waves freshened, and the prow rose and fell, not breasting the rollers gracefully as the gulls and all sailing craft, but sharply, with a resounding slap under her nose.

Forward, the tarpaulin moved.

"What's that, Pierre?"

"Muskrats, Monsieur."

Again a heaving of the canvas, which no rodent's body could have caused. The seaman crossed himself.