Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/285

 crushing one. So he ate, though it was more to encourage her than to appease his own hunger. And when their frugal meal was finished, he looked at his watch with speculative and half-closed eyes. Then he gave a deep sigh and turned to his operating-table.

"Time's up!" was all he said.

The girl, sitting on the berth-edge, saw his hand go up to the switch-board; she saw the lever come down on the contact-pins, one by one, and heard the hum and drone of the wakened dynamo. She saw his rubber-muffled fingers catch up the piece of heavy insulated copper wire which had been attached to the dismantled binding-post, and the flash of blue flame that exploded from knob to knob across the spark-gap as he completed his circuit by touching his wire-end to the contact-point of his improvised key. She saw his intently inclined head as he sat listening with his phones pressed close over his ears, and the strong-sinewed yet still oddly boyish-looking face beaded with minute drops of perspiration.

His preoccupied left hand went out to his tuner, and still he sat there, over his reconstructed responder, waiting. The only sound in the cabin was the continuous whir of the electric fan on its unpainted pine shelf. The minutes dragged slowly away. The silence