Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/301

 trousers, a yellow-faced white jacket and a gold-braided cap, came aboard. He carried a sword, held at his side by a red sash, and was followed by an alert-eyed, narrow-shouldered, yellow-faced youth in blue denim striped with red.

The officer with the sword brought his heels together and saluted Captain Yandel. That worthy seaman, descending from his bridge, demanded to know, in English, why he was so damned slow about getting pratique, and what all the damned fuss was about.

Before any reply was proffered to these impatient queries, Ganley himself appeared from below deck. A crooked smile rested on his bruised and swollen face, a smile that seemed more sinister than the light in his baleful and blood-shot little eyes.

"Come in off the deck!" he commanded, with the calmness of unquestioned authority.

That was all that McKinnon heard, for the talk was resumed in the captain's stateroom, with thunderous volleys of broken Spanish on the one side, with calm and dictatorial insolence on the other. It was to this talk that Alicia, as she leaned over the ship's rail, listened so attentively.

"What is it?" asked McKinnon, noticing her wide and terrified eyes.

"We are in quarantine," she answered.