Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/228

 could be little more hope for quibbles or equivocations in that quarter.

McKinnon, stooping to overlook his dynamo, felt that he had at last reached the end of his rope. The Princeton was still beyond his call.

When he stood up again he mopped his face with a handkerchief, and irritably summoned a steward and for the second time sent down to the engine-room asking how he was expected to operate his coils on less than a hundred volts.

Then he once more adjusted his helmet-receiver and sat back and sighed, letting the hot current from his electric fan play on his face. But the tropical air seemed devitalised, bereft of its oxygen. He was dimly conscious of the passage of time, of the muffled and monotonous drone of the fan, of the casual ship-noises far below deck. But nothing came to stir his responder into life. There was not a ship or station to be picked up. The day had deepened into evening, and nothing had come to help him solve his problem.

Already, on the ship's bridge, the navigating officer in soiled duck had picked up the Toajiras Light. Behind that light lay the flat and miasmal Locombian coast. And somewhere, still farther to the southwest, armies were being arrayed against each other. Somewhere, across the deepening night, men were ambushing and