Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/67

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THE FIGHT AT THE REEF
55

would not get any work out of them for days, or even weeks.

He looked from them to the ketch, now far away, and shook his fist malignantly. Moniz was rarely baulked in any enterprise he undertook. Scruples formed no obstacle for him. What he wanted he took, as a rule, sometimes with a slight display of diplomacy and sometimes by brute force. The veneer of civilization sat very lightly on Vasco Moniz, and just now the spirit of the primitive man within him was strangely active. And he was cunning. He had suffered reverse, but soothed his ruffled feelings with the reflection that the fortunes of war vary. As the schooner neared the buoy to which she was usually tied off Tamba, all that was vindictive about him was stirred. He had no concrete plans, but they could be formulated, all in good time.