Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/344

 perhaps, from immoderate drafts of brandy on a wofully empty stomach.

He saw them, as in a dream, but he scarcely gave them a thought. All he knew was that the woman huddled down at his side was still safe, and his car was still under way. Beyond that, he knew, nothing counted. Death had snapped at his heels too often and too closely that night; he was supremely contemptuous of their fire-cracker powder and their pot-metal guns. He wanted to get to Guariqui and have something to eat, and then sleep for twenty good hours. And the racing of the car made him dizzy. And every bone in his body ached. And he wondered how long he would have to keep shooting.

Then he sat back, with a sigh, and rested his arms. He noticed that his gun-barrel was hot to the touch. He noticed, too, that the noise of the shooting was not so disquietingly loud in his ears. It began to dawn on his dazed mind that they had faced the worst of the fight. He began to understand that they had forced their way through De Brigard's lines, that they were swinging up to the outskirts of the capital, that they were to reach Guariqui, after all.

Then he remembered pounding out over a narrow iron bridge, under which flashed and rippled a little stream as blue as a robin's egg.