Screaming, she fled uphill
toward the custom house.
CHAPTER X
HULL "CAPITULATES"
Like a startled deer, Inez Windham fled from McTurpin and the stranger,
her little, high-heeled slippers sinking unheeded into the horse-trodden
mire of Portsmouth Square, her silk skirt spattered and soiled; her
hair, freed from the protecting mantilla, blowing in the searching trade
wind. Thus, as Commander Hull sat upon the custom house veranda, reading
the latest dispatch from Captain Ward, she burst upon him--a flushed,
disheveled, lovely vision with fear-stricken eyes.
"Senor," she panted, "Senor Commandante ... I must speak with you at
once!"
Hull rose. "My dear young lady"--he regarded her with patent
consternation--"my dear young lady ... w-what is wrong?"
She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of
ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence.
Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched
toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber,
the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her,
gravely anxious.
She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture.
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