Rex Beach

The Spoilers Rex Beach

GLENISTER gazed out over the harbor, agleam with the lights ofanchored ships, then up at the crenelated mountains, black against the sky. He drank the cool air burdened with its taints of the sea, while the blood of his boyhood leaped within him. "Oh, it's fine-fine," he murmured, "and this is my country-mycountry, after all, Dex. It's in my veins, this hunger for the North. Igrow. I expand." "Careful you don't bust," warned Dextry. "I've seen men getplumb drunk on mountain air. Don't expand too strong in one spot."He went back abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptlyaverting any danger of the air's too tonic quality. "Gad! What a smudge!" sniffed the younger man. "You ought tobe in quarantine." "I'd ruther smell like a man than talk like a kid. You desecrate thehour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your æstheticsain't honed up to the beauties of good tobacco." The other laughed, inflating his deep chest. In the gloom hestretched his muscles restlessly, as though an excess of vigor filledhim