Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/266

 misleading look of pathos, seemed to show nothing but a patient forbearance.

"I want you to get that couple where they belong," he calmly and slowly replied. "I want that woman put where she won't be taking potshots at every passenger she doesn't like!"

The waiting and wide-eyed group at the door had increased by this time, until their bodies, pressing close, shut all air from the crowded cabin. The captain shouldered them back savagely. That his authority should be overridden, in his own ship, on his own deck, was more than he could endure.

"Get out o' here!" he cried, in his arbitrary and inconsequential rage. "Get out o' this cabin, or I'll throw you out!"

The ship's mate, a wiry Costa Rican with the hungry and predaceous face of a pirate, made an effort to forestall his superior officer's intention. He dropped the leather-covered bridge-telescope which in his haste he had carried with him, and caught the rebellious passenger by the right arm, as though to drag him forth.

But one sweep of that huge right arm sent the mate stumbling and falling over the ruins of the steamer-chair.

Captain Yandel beheld that offence, and it left him no longer a reasoning being. His last instinctive sense of order and right had been