"Let's all get out of this!" replied Alaric, modestly.
The American offered Hardwicke his cocktail bottle. "Let's get her
down. I hear carriage wheels now. Would you just tell me your real
name, now, the name you use when you are not doing your 'character'
song and dance." The young officer smiled at the American's rough
address.
"Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, and, this lady's future
husband," confidently remarked Prince Djiddin.
"Oh, yes," grinned Alaric Hobbs, "the last part I'll take for
gospel truth. Well, Major, I'm glad to know you." And he then, very
practically, aided the descent of Miss Nadine Johnstone, for a
dozen stout arms now held up the ponderous old ladder which had been
purposely dislodged by the Coast Guardsmen. Alaric Hobbs surveyed
his battle ground.
"If they had only dared to use lights, I might have had a harder
fight," chuckled Alaric Hobbs, as he descended the very last one.
"Major," said he huskily, "I've got my things corraled up there,
and the instruments, and so on. Leave me a couple of men, and get
your own people back now to the Folly. I'll 'hold the fort' here,
till you bring the proper authorities. Our man won't run away now.
He is 'permanently fixed' for a long repose from 'further anxieties.'"
But fiercely bristling up, old Andrew Fraser now loudly demanded to
be allowed the ordering of all. "This is an outrage," he babbled.
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