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Ken's beautiful, speedy ball, breast high, was certainly a temptation. Starke lifted a long, lofty fly far beyond Homans, who ran and ran, and turned to get it gracefully at his breast. Worry Arthurs sat stern and intent upon the Wayne bench. "Get that hit back and go them a run better!" was his sharp order.
Now, if he had struck me with his hand I could not have been more surprised at his ignorance. Just think of it here was a man left behind on Ken's Island when all the riffraff there had fled to some shelter on the sea; a man working quietly, I was sure, to discover what he could of the gases which poisoned us; a man in Mistress Ruth's own house who did not even know her name.
Commander Strang gave an order, and a little row of bunting ran up on the tiny mast of the submarine. "Heave to, or I'll sink you," that means, observed Ken's friend. The only response was a thicker hail of bullets.
Keene lined to right field, a superb hit that looked good for a triple, but it had not the speed to get beyond the fleet sprinter. Ken eyed the curly-haired Prince as if he was saying to himself: "I'm putting them over to-day. Hit if you can!" Prince appeared to jump up and chop Ken's first pitch. The ball struck on fair ground and bounded very high, and was a safe hit.
I have seen many beautiful sights upon the sea, in storm or tempest, God's weather or the devil's; but I shall never forget that sunset which brought me to Ken's Island on as strange an errand as ever commissioned a ship.
Mind you, I said all this as much to put him off as anything else, for I'd been careful enough to blab no word about the Southern Cross being Miss Ruth's very own ship, nor about her orders that we should call at Ken's Island; and I knew that when a man's angry at what you say to him he doesn't think much of two and two making four, but as often as not makes them eight or ten.
At length Ken's turn came with two other players, one of whom he recognized as the sour-complexioned fellow of the day before. "Wull, you're pretty fresh," he said to Ken as they went in. He had a most exasperating manner. "Say, I don't like you a whole lot," retorted Ken. Then a colored attendant ushered them into a large room in which were several men. The boys were stripped to the waist.
"Have you got the doctor, Phil?" "Not yet; I wanted to ask you." "Get him quick." Ken ran upstairs. Halfway, he tumbled over something crouched beside the banisters. It was Kirk, quite wretched. He caught Ken's ankle. "Mother's crying," he said; "I can hear her. Oh, do something, Ken!" "I'm going to," said his brother. "Don't sit here in the dark and make yourself miserable."
Quick as he was, Ken was quicker. As the man's arm came up, so did Ken's, and seizing Strang by the wrist, he jerked him back. Before the man could fire a second time, one of the bluejackets had raised his rifle and shot him through the body.
Long hot summers in New York when awnings, window boxes geranium filled, drinks iced and acidulous, and Ken's motor car for cooling drives to the beaches failed to soothe the terror in her. Thirty ... thirty-two ... thirty-four ... thirty-six.... She refused to say it. She refused to think of it. She put the number out of her mind and slammed the door on it on that hideous number beginning with f.
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