Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/371

 as a Crusader smoking a Pittsburg stogie, or a monastery with mail-chutes, or a cathedral with a cash-register. Then Aikens led him to the battlemented edge of the flat roof and showed him the arc-lights that swung in Avenida Sacramento and Calle Florida, and the new power house toward Paraiso Hill, and the statuary that gleamed through the green palms of the Parque Nacional, and the Asilo Chapai and the roof of the new Boynton Hospital, and the columned front of the Theatro Locombio. Then he drew himself up and protested that Guariqui wasn't such a one-horse town, after all.

McKinnon continued to look down at Guariqui, after Aikens had gone back to his work. He could see the iron-fenced Palace gardens, cool and shadowy and secluded-looking. In the Plaza beyond he could see the splash of water from a frond-hidden fountain, and the white statue of some unknown hero who had died in some unknown war for Locombian liberty. He could see the yellow front of the cathedral and the sun-steeped Prado white with dust. He could see the American bluejackets, from the Princeton, who were still picketing the streets, and a bullock-cart that crawled noisily over the cobblestones.

At the head of Avenida Sacramento he could, see another detachment of white-helmeted