Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/192



was not until the Laminian was well down off the coast of San Salvador that she rode into settled weather. Then, in a night, she seemed to emerge from a world of wind and unrest and tumult into a world of brooding quietness. As she crept on, forging ever southward under the high-arching azure sky, this sense of quietness and completion grew deeper. The air became warm and soft. The sun streamed down on the patched awnings, on the worn deck that seemed bone-white in the flat, strong light of noonday. Through the ventilators, all day long, came the purposeful throb and beat of the engines, muffled, like the throbbing of a great heart. There seemed something inevitable and ordered in that unhurried and undeviating pulse, as though the ship and all she carried were forever at peace with the world.

A passenger or two moved slowly about the level decks or sat listless in the dark shade of