Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/299

 to the misty line of its farthest mountain-tops. And he wondered if it was to be allowed him ever to reach those mountains, and what would await him there. He wondered, with such odds against him, if the hour for activity would bring with it an honest fighting-chance.

He turned his anxious eyes to the tug swinging authoritatively in under the Laminian's quarter. He knew only too well, from the gasconading attitudes of its uniformed officials, from the sheer effrontery with which they swung in and overhauled the bigger steamship, that he was at last beholding the local instruments of the new "Liberal" dictatorship. And he knew that with their advent the curtain was about to rise on a new act of the tangled drama. He racked his brain to understand what Ganley's move would be. He knew that all day long the gun-runner had kept to his cabin. A steward had reported that his head was bad and causing him much pain. He had eaten nothing; he had kept his berth, cursing the Laminian and the heat of her coffinlike cabins and, above all, her sottish and pigheaded captain.

Yet McKinnon knew it would take more than a sore head to keep Ganley from acting when the moment for action arrived. The one thing that puzzled the operator was what form that first move of Ganley's was to take.