Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/241

 And still again came the silence, and still again the call, indignant, peremptory, to the appreciatively trained ear as eloquent of impatience in its microphonic dots and dashes as the human voice itself could be.

Automatically, McKinnon wrote out the despatches, word for word, as a matter of record.

His chance had come at last: all he now needed was power. It would take him but a minute to slip down to the engine-room, he concluded, as he threw on a striped green bath robe with a hood like a monk's cowl. Then he could see for himself that they were slinging the right voltage up to him.

He sprang for the cabin door, unlocked it, and swung it open. As he leaped out across the door-sill he ran head-on into the arms of Ganley.

He scarcely looked up. His one thought was to reach that engine-room and to reach it with out loss of time. He accepted the momentary obstruction as nothing more than a clumsy sea man who had scarcely been given time to step aside. He struggled to edge about the unyielding bulk, swinging to one side with a preoccupied half-growl of impatience. It was not until he found himself seized and almost carried back into his cabin that he saw either the meaning or the menace of the situation.

"Is that message for me?" demanded Ganley,