Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/261

 with a little trickle of blood running down over one swollen cheek-bone.

"What's this mean?" he demanded of his operator. McKinnon's senses had come back to him by this time. But a hopelessness that was almost worse than death itself crept through him.

"He's killed our wireless! Our wireless! Can't you see he's killed it!"

The captain's mental state was such that ideas filtered into the narrow seat of his consciousness but slowly.

"But how? And why?"

"The responder!" gasped McKinnon.

"But what of it!"

"Look at that responder!" cried the operator. "It's smashed. And the key's ruined! He's cut the heart out of our apparatus!"

"But I want to know the meaning of this bar-room brawling aboard my ship!" still thundered its master.

McKinnon pointed landward savagely, toward the mangrove swamps and mountains of Locombia.

"He's been trying to stop my sending. He said he'd kill me if I sent."

"That's a lie," retorted Ganley. "He's working with this woman to juggle messages