Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/202

 He began to wish, as he watched her, that it lay in his power to bring some touch of contentment to those unhappy and anxious eyes before him.

"We'll surely overhaul the Princeton," he had the hardihood to assert, "if she's lying to anywhere in the neighbourhood of Culebra."

"And if that fails?" asked the girl.

"I'm hoping we'll still be able to pick up Puerto Locombia itself," he ventured.

She shook her head meditatively, absentmindedly.

"There is no station at Puerto Locombia."

"No station?" cried McKinnon.

"It will be dismantled—most likely it will be burned to the ground by this time. If De Brigard is fighting his way up to the capital, he would never leave a coast-station behind him, to be calling for help."

Here was news, indeed, thought McKinnon; and a sudden grateful look leaped into his eyes, as he realised the misstep from which she had saved him.

"Can you remember if there is a telegraph-line between Puerto Locombia and that capital?" he asked, after a moment of deep thought.

"There was one, once," answered the woman. "But their poles rotted down in less than a year—the heat and rain and insects of that climate,