United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I don't propose to clutter my head with stuff that does not concern my business here, Little. We're here to check up on Gordon and call Leyden's hand when he arrives. That's plenty for two ordinary men. The why and wherefore of mysterious women has nothing to do with me."
Natalie Sheldon, at liberty on board Leyden's schooner, happy and comfortable, yet being visited at midnight by Mrs. Goring, friend of Leyden's fiercest foe, and wishing the Barang's skipper success and happiness! Barry plunged straight along for the stockade gate.
Ramming a right fist like a jib-sheet-block hard into Leyden's solar plexus, he brought the same hand up streaking to the jaw; his left shot out as his man staggered to fall, and crunched home with a smash into the now distorted features. Uproar ensued. The landlord ran in, feigning distress. Little joined, and the supposedly drunken sailor was hauled away from his fallen adversary.
Little started up, too, but half-heartedly, then sat down to follow the action of his friend. He too had caught that last remark, and his fingers itched to feel Leyden's windpipe throb under them. Barry staggered across the veranda, cleverly simulating drunkenness. Furious as he was, he was cool enough to play a definite and reasonably safe game.
"First there is a trail across to here very bad, but easily passable for natives, even fairly well burdened and then up the mountains, right where the trail crosses, gold is found in abundance. Begin to see?" he smiled at his audience. They looked rather less puzzled, but still uncertain, and he went on: "Don't you see Leyden's scheme? You, Gordon, know it, of course."
The day dawned muggy and windless; one of the native seamen in a commandeered canoe paddled up from his observation point near the river mouth to report and get his relief. There was no sign of Leyden's schooner, nor did the day promise a wind that could possibly bring her in.
The crew chattered freely and much merriment was mixed in the chatter. But the thing that shocked Barry, and gave even the unthinking Little cause for reflection, was Leyden's tone. If ever utter and complete triumph and exaltation were expressed in man's voice, they were ringing then in every word the man uttered.
His illness had been aggravated by the rumor of Leyden's fall, a fiction which Cornelius Mierop was now enabled flatly to contradict. The Prince began to mend from that hour.
Leyden alone, Barry noticed, drank nothing. A roar greeted the last speaker's shrewd hint at Leyden's reputation as a ladies' man, which he replied to by taking a fat wallet from his breast pocket. This he opened ostentatiously, and after a suitable pause, produced a cabinet photograph which he pressed to his lips with a theatrical flourish.
He flung himself into a long cane chair and plunged into a recital that induced a gale of merriment in his listeners. Barry's eyes glittered like points of flame and bored into Leyden's back as if to force notice. "Go easy, Jack," warned Little, sensing trouble. "Don't start a fuss." "Shut up!" growled Barry, holding his gaze. "I won't start anything.
Word Of The Day