CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND VISITOR
McKinnon was oppressed by the thought that the hour was late and his body bone-tired. But he did not close communication with the Royal Mail operator who had "picked him up" through the fog until he had been duly warned of heavy weather southeast of Hatteras. Through the night came also the news that one of the Royal Mail passengers, an American consul from Aregua, had broken his thigh-bone against a bulkhead, and the Laminian was asked to relay the news to New York. This meant a call for ambulance and doctors to be at the landing-wharf, together with an order to have a hospital-room made ready.
So the key was kept busy again while the beneficent resources of science were being marshalled so many miles away. The Laminian's operator had bidden his far-off fellow worker a sleepy "good-night," and was still stooping absently over his tuning-box—which had not
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