Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/369

 where it was quiet, where he could rest in peace. Then the noise grew louder again, and a shouting and cheering column of bluejackets swung up, followed by a swarthy-skinned band of horsemen, with carbines, on prancing little Peruvian ponies. McKinnon could see that they were tearing his boxes open, that they were carrying away his precious ammunition.

He tried to fight against them, but he found himself held down, and through the drifting sand-dust he saw Alicia's white face bent low over him. Then somebody called out angrily: "Stand back there! Back!" and a huge hairy white hand tried to choke the breath of life out of his body by pouring what seemed liquid fire down his throat, from a leather-covered flask. This flask was quickly and mercifully knocked to one side, by an angry-faced man in white duck, who wore spectacles and said in perfect English: "Get the poor beggar into a fiacre!" Then there was the repeated cry of "Stand back!" and "To the Hospital!" and "No; to the Palace!" and the next moment hands were hauling and lifting at his tortured body. He felt, at times, that a woman was weeping somewhere beside him. But he could not be sure of this. He heard a thin and ghostlike pound of hoofs and a rumble of wheels. And that was all he could remember.