Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/195

 night and a day in her berth, emerged from her cabin a little paler than before, with a soft hollow of anxiety under either cheek-bone. But otherwise she showed no sign of the ordeal through which she had passed, or of the chaos of uncertainty which still confronted her.

McKinnon's own nights, since Hatteras had been left behind, had been equally unsettled. His restless and broken sleep was disturbed by dreams wherein he thought he was engulfed in burning quicksands, and held fast there, when he ought to be at his key. The more he struggled and raged to reach his instrument, just beyond his touch, the more firmly the engulfing quicksands seemed to hold him. Then troubled visions of firing-squads and blindfolded prisoners of war would run through his brain, of dark-skinned little soldiers in ragged denim shouting bravas to a beautiful woman in navy blue, of imprisonment in a small and fetid quartel, or huge, red-handed conspirators and drunken and cursing ship-captains. In his waking hours he was oppressed by a continued sense of suspended action, like that ominous impression which creeps over a ship when her engines stop in mid-ocean.

The drama about him seemed at a standstill. But only too well he knew that this suspense was for the time being alone. It was not peace