"I tell you, Gavan, I'm not going to listen—"
"Yes, you are. I've listened to you often enough. You can listen to me for once." He told him about the leakage of the shipping secret. The loss it had been to us. The gain it had been to the enemy. "Old Colonel McManus is right. She has poked her nose everywhere."
"All this makes me anxious," said Julian, gravely.
His friend breathed a free half-minute.
"Very anxious about you, Gavan."
"See here—" Napier stopped short—"because I was wrong about Gull Island is no reason—"
"So you're satisfied you were wrong, are you?" Julian said lightly.
"Naturally, since you found nothing to report." Then it came out that Julian had had "more serious things" to think about. He hadn't been near the Island. It was the first serious quarrel of their lives.
Napier left his friend and caught up with Sir William. The pressure on his mind did not suffer him to wait till he got his chief alone. When he had asked and obtained Sir William's reluctant consent "to a few days off," Napier broke through the little hail of questions, and commented with, "Isn't that the mine?"
"It is! It is!"