All at once, still holding the anguished
Basile, he saw, and observed that the actor saw, the heaped-up nonsense
of the affair. Ramsey's mood leaped to both of them like a flame, and
they laughed together while Hugh exhorted the exhorter: "Go below! For
your life, go!"
The man cast a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him
only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said
majestically, "Go, you hopeless ass," he went--with haste.
Out of the group by the bell John Courteney, apparently as unmoved as if
all this were but common routine, answered Watson's silent look with his
own while the pilot, taking his ear from a speaking-tube, grasped the
bell-rope.
"Wood?" asked the captain.
XXXVIII
THE CANE AGAIN
"Partly, sir."
All marked the qualifying word though at the same time all witnessed the
cross-fire of challenge and retort that flashed between the three
brothers. Basile had dropped his weapon and ceased to struggle, yet
still showed a mental torture, the same he had betrayed at the previous
afternoon's worship, and in all hearts, even those of the senator's
group, it brought back for him the same tender indulgence as before.
Meanwhile Ramsey and the cub pilot had caught up the cane's two parts
and laid them in the hands of the actor, who quietly resheathed them
while Basile mocked the twins.
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