Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/26

 felt as though he were being shadowed. He could not shake off the impression that some vague figure or two was guardedly dogging his footsteps.

This sense of being shadowed grew stronger as night came on. It made him doubly anxious to get back to his ship, to know the security of his bald, little, white-painted cabin. It caused him to reiterate to himself the engineer's morose dictum that the city was not to be trusted. He had hungered for the Unexpected; he had been restless for his emprising hour or two on land. But this, he muttered to himself, was the kind of night that took all the curl out of Romance. He was not worthy of the venture. He was better suited to the quietness of a ship s cabin. He disliked the thought of the two pacing shadows that seemed to be following him through the fog. He wanted the Laminian's dirty fore-deck once more under his feet.

He designedly kept out of all danger zones, to make security doubly sure. A thick-voiced man with a black muffler about his throat had trailed after him to demand if he had no old clothes to dispose of. But he did not so much as stop to answer. A stranger in a Stetson hat, still later, caught companionably at his arm and implored him to drink with him. But he freed himself sharply and kept on his way. A figure