Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/368

 She twisted and tightened it cruelly; but he was too tired to argue with her about it. He felt it would be best to humour her; she had had to endure so much for him. And it was rather pleasant, he told himself, having her fussing about him that way. But he wished she wouldn't cry and shake, and that he could explain to her how much he wanted to go to sleep. Then he was roused by more shouts and cries, and by a voice quite close to him, which said, in wonder: "Good God, he's a white man!" Then came more men, and a sudden order for someone to stand back.

McKinnon opened his eyes, wearily, and saw a yellow-faced stranger with a pointed gray beard. He wore a uniform like an officer's, and carried a sword from a red silk sash, a foolish and womanish-looking sash. Then came other men and other officers, and a thin and far-away babbling of voices, till the yellow sand where the car lay changed into a lake of swarming and crowding human beings, into a sea of little brown-faced jumping-jacks who shouted and contorted and flung foolish little red-striped army-caps up in the air, gibbering and arguing and calling, all the while, in some outlandish and incomprehensible tongue.

McKinnon neither knew nor cared what it meant. He only wanted to get somewhere