"Do what ye please for the five hours, McTee, but give me the room I need for breathin'. D'ye hear? Otherwise I'll be forgettin' me promises."
"Do I hear ye?" answered McTee, snarling. "Aye, growl while you may.
I'll stop that throat of yours for good—tonight."
He turned on his heel, and the two men separated. Harrigan struck with a long swing out over a road which led into the rolling fields near the little town. He walked rapidly, and his thoughts kept pace, for he was counting his chances to win Kate as a miser counts his hoard of gold. Two pictures weighed large in his mind. One was of Kate at ease in the home of the Spaniard. Such ease would never be his; she came from another social world—a higher sphere. The second picture was of McTee climbing down from the wireless house and calmly assuming command of the mutineers in the crisis. Such a maneuver would never have occurred to the Irishman, and it was only through that maneuver that the ship had been brought to shore, for nothing save the iron will of McTee could have directed the mutineers.
When the sun hung low, he turned and strode back toward the village, and despair trailed him like his shadow.
He began to see clearly now what he had always feared. She loved McTee—McTee, who spoke clear, pure English, when he chose, and who could talk of many things. She loved McTee, but she dared not avow that love for fear of infuriating Harrigan and thereby risking the life of the Scotchman. It grew plainer and plainer. With the thought of Kate came another, far different, and yet blending one with another. When he reached the village, it was still a short time before sunset. He went straight to the British consulate and entered, for he had reached the solution of his puzzle.
"My name's Harrigan," he said to the little man with the sideburns and the studious eyes, "and I've come to know if the old country has sent for volunteers. I want to go over."
"The old country," said the consul, "has called for volunteers, and I have discovered a means of sending our boys across the water; but"—and here he examined Harrigan shrewdly—"but it's an easy thing to take an Irish name. How am I to know you're not a German, my friend? I've never seen you before."
Harrigan swelled.
"A German? Me?" he muttered, and then, his head tilted back: "Ye little wan-eyed, lantern-jawed, flat-headed block, is it me—is it Harrigan ye call a German? Shtep out from behind the desk an' let me see av you're a man!"
Strangely enough, the consul did not seem irritated by this outburst.
He was, in fact, smiling. Then his hand went out to the Irishman.