shooting. Peons dragged out of peaceful valleys, "volunteers" commandeered at the point of the bayonet, unattached citizens forcibly seized in cafés and the open streets, were being set at one another's throats, because it suited the plans of a placid-eyed and lethargic conspirator who wrung power and money out of the optimism of a deluded and childlike people.
McKinnon, as he sat in his hot and stifling station, wondered if his mission had failed. He asked himself if he had not been outmaneuvered, from the first.
The weight of this seeming failure grew heavier and heavier on his spirit. He felt as though every dead body in that Locombian war fare was pressing down on him, as though the blood from every gunshot wound was submerging him in a river of self-hate.
He turned back to his apparatus, sullenly, wearily, desperately. But call and tune and call again as he might, he could get nothing. He wondered if, by any chance, Duran and his government were already a thing of the past; if the Laminian and all she carried had come too late; if Guariqui had already fallen. Then he mopped his face again, and told himself that the heat had got on his nerves. Any one, when tired and half-cooked, he muttered, would feel dispirited.
