Kitabı oku: «In Red and Gold», sayfa 9

At the sound of a hasty light step Dixie looked up into the haggard gray face of the Kid.

“What was it?” he whispered, glancing fearfully behind him. “Wha’d he say to you?”

She dropped her eyes; turned away.

“Quick! Tell me, or by God, I’ll – ”

She threw up a frail white hand.

“Not now, Jim!”

“When?”

“He’ll have to sleep. There’s work ahead.”

“If you think I can sleep – ”

“I can’t either, Jim. It’s dreadful. But I’m going to tell you everything. You have a right to know. Wait till we’re past the steamer. We’d better get below now anyhow. We mustn’t be seen. If we aren’t, they’ll never suspect this junk. Then make sure he’s asleep and come up here. I’ll be waiting.”

The Kid brought Dixie’s breakfast of rice and eggs and tea to the gallery.

“The cook was only wounded a little,” he explained. “Tom’s got him working now.”

Dixie was reclining on a Canton chair of green rushes over a bamboo frame, her head resting languidly near the tuberoses. Now and again she drew in deeply the rich odor. And beyond the fringe of flowers and the carven railing she could see the river. Junks moved slowly by, sliding down with the current – somber seagoing craft out of Tientsin and Cheefoo and Swatow and even Canton. By a village were clustered open sampans, and slipper-boats with their coverings of arched matting. The small craft of the fishermen with suspended nets or with roosting, crowding cormorants clustered here and there along the channel-way. Everywhere farmers and their coolies were at work in the fields. A family – father, mother, boys and girls – worked tirelessly with their feet a large irrigating wheel at the water’s edge.

The Kid seated himself on the deck and mournfully looked on while she ate. Perversely she delayed her narrative, playing with time and life. In her oblique way she was happy, exercising her gift for gambling on a scale new in her experience. Indeed, for the thrill she now experienced, Dixie Carmichael would have paid almost any price. Life itself – the mere existing – she held almost as cheaply as the Chinese. Deliberately, with nerves steady as steel instruments, she finished her simple breakfast and then put the bowls aside on the deck.

Lying back, averting her face, gazing off down the river, she began the narrative that she had framed within the hour. Her manner, calm at first, soon offered evidences of deeply suppressed emotion. Her voice exhibited the first unsteadiness the Kid had ever heard in it. She drew out an embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her blouse and pressed it once or twice to her eyes, as, with an air of dogged determination, she talked on.

The narrative itself dealt with her girlhood near San Francisco, her chance meeting with Tex Connor, then a well-known character on the western coast of America, her girlish infatuation with him, and an elopement that she had supposed would end in marriage. Instead she found her life ruined. Connor had beaten her, degraded her, driven her into vice. She ran away from him; reached the China Coast; settled down with every intent to become what she termed, in his and her language, a square gambler.

“When I took up with you a little last year, Jim, it seemed to me that at last I’d found a man I could tie to. You never knew my real feelings. I’m not the kind that tells much or shows much. I guess perhaps my life’s been too hard. But – oh, Jim! – well, you’re, seeing the real girl now. I’m pretty well beaten down, Jim… You’re getting the truth from me at last. I’ve got to tell it – all of it – for your own sake. You’re in worse trouble than you know, right now. The cards are stacked against you, Jim. Your life even” – her voice broke; but she got it under control – “I’m going to save you if I can.”

Moodily he watched her.

“If it was anybody but Tex! He’s merciless. He’s strong. He never forgets… Listen, Jim! Tex came clear from London to find me. And he found out about – us – you and me. That I was growing fond of you. He never forgets and he never forgives. Oh. Jim, can’t you see it! Can’t you see that that’s why he took you on – so he could watch you, keep you away from me? Can’t you see what a game I’ve had to play? God, if you’d heard what he said to me back here this very morning – Oh, it’s too awful! I can’t tell you! He’s so determined! He gets his way, Jim – Tex gets his way!.. Oh, what can I do!”

“No, wait – I’ve got to tell you the whole thing. You said he was planning to cross me. He’ll do that, of course. I don’t think I care much about that. But you, Jim – oh, you poor innocent boy! If you could only see! You’ll never get your hands on one of the viceroy’s jewels.”

She turned her face toward him. Her eyes now were swollen and wet with tears.

Jim, gray of face, held in his two hands a Chinese knife, balancing it. There were stains on the blade. He must have picked it up, she reflected, here on the junk. For it wouldn’t be like him to carry such a weapon. It seemed to her then that he was holding his breath. She saw him moisten his blue lips with the tip of an ashen tongue. He was trying to speak. At least his lips parted again. She waited. When the voice did finally come, it was so hoarse that he had evident difficulty in making it intelligible.

“Tex may be strong – but if you think I’m afraid – ”

“Oh, Jim… no, I don’t mean that! Not that! Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying-! It’s only when I think how happy you and I might be – think of it! really rich! able to go and live decently somewhere, like regular folks!”

Silently, with surprising stealthy swiftness, he got to his feet. His right hand, with the knife, busied itself in a side pocket of his coat.

“Say the word, Dixie” – his face was contorted with the muscular effort necessary to produce this small sound – “say the word, and I’ll kill him.”

“Oh, no, Jim!” she covered her face with her thin hands, and sobbed, very low. “Oh God, what can we do? Isn’t there some other way?”

“Say the word,” he whispered.

“Would it be” – she broke down again – “would it be – where a man’s a devil, where he’s threatened – wouldn’t it be like defending ourselves?”

“Say the word!”

“Oh, Jim – God forgive me!.. Yes!”

Her lips barely framed the word. But he read it. She watched him as he stepped around the huge coils of tracking rope on the roof of the steersman’s pit; watched until he dropped softly down and disappeared.

Then, lying back, very still, she listened. But the oarsmen were chanting up forward, the laopan shouting; nearer, the steersman was singing an apparently endless falsetto narrative (as if there had never been bloodshed). The minutes slowly passed. She drew in the sweet exhalation of the tuberoses… still no unusual sound. She herself exhibited no sign of excitement beyond the hint of a cryptic smile and the white light in her eyes… Her shopping bag lay on her lap. Opening it, she looked at the bracelet watch, that nestled close to a small triangular bottle of green corrosive sublimate tablets… The gentle wash of the current against the hull gave out a soothing sound. The slowly rising sun beat warmly down, and the polished deck radiated the heat. A sensation of drowsiness was stealing over her. For a short while she fought it off; but then, deciding that no anxiety on her part could be of value, she yielded, closed the bag on her lap, and drifted into slumber.

It was pleasantly warmer still. She felt her eyes about to open – slowly – on a presence. This languor was delicious. As an almost ascetic epicure in sensations she rested a moment longer in it, thinking dreamily of priceless gems heaped in her hollowed hands; of luxurious idleness in some exotic port – Singapore, or Penang (she had loved the tropical splendor of Penang), or in Burmah or India – Rangoon say, or even Lucknow, Lahore and Simla. They would know less about her there. And with the means to operate on a larger scale she should be able to add enormously to her wealth. She decided to dress and act differently; make a radical change in her methods.

Her lips parted. The presence before her – coatless, little cap pushed back off the low forehead – was Connor. He had pushed aside a flower pot to make a seat on the rail.

She closed her eyes again. He still wore the gray flannels and the white shoes with the rubber soles-It would be the shoes that had enabled him to approach without awakening her. He was smoking a cigar And the face was wooden again – save for his eye – He at stared oddly at her. And she thought his breathing somewhat short, just at first.

She opened her eyes again.

“I’ve had a good nap,” she said.

He smoked, and stared.

“Where’s Jim?” she asked then; quite casually: raising herself on an elbow.

He made no reply; smoked on, still a thought breathless, fixing her with his eyes.

“He brought me some breakfast, just before I fell asleep… What time is it?”

For what seemed a long space he did not even answer this; merely smoked and stared. She had never, sensitively keen as were her perceptions, felt so curious a hostility in Connor. She had hitherto supposed that she understood him, short as had been their actual acquaintance – her narrative of a past with him in America, as related to Jim, was false – but the man before her now, sitting all but motionless on the railing, smoking with an odd rapid intensity, holding that cold eye on her, was wholly alien.

Finally he replied: “It’s afternoon.”

“No!” She sat up. “Have we been going right along?”

“Right along.”

She stood erect; covered a yawn; then with her thin hands smoothed down the wrinkled blue skirt about her hips.

“I look like the devil,” she remarked. The thin hands went to her hair. “You haven’t noticed any sort of a mirror in the cabin, have you, Tex?”

He did not reply.

Faintly through the still air came a faint sound – a boom – boom-bom.

“What’s that?” she asked sharply.

“Fighting around Hankow.”

“We’re not way up there?” She stepped to the side and looked out ahead. “There’s a city!”

“Tom says it’s Huang Chau.”

“Hello! We’re there!”

He inclined his head.

“What are you going to do?”

“Tie up here.”

She heard now other and more confused sounds. The junk was slowing down; working in toward the yellow shallows.

“Now listen!” said he. She glanced at him, then away, apparently considering the quiet landscape; alien he was indeed, and hostile, his manner that of an inarticulate man struggling with a set speech… “Listen! You’re smart enough. But I want you to understand I don’t trust you.‘’

“Don’t you, Tex?”

“When I go ashore, you’re to stay here – right here on this deck – where you are now.”

“What’s the big idea, Tex?”

“There’ll be men to see that you do stay here. I want you to get this straight.”

“Of course,” said she musingly, “you won’t be able to rob me outright. You’ll have to give me enough of a share to keep me quiet afterward.”

He said nothing.

“But what’s to prevent the crew from getting away with the junk. I’m not very keen about being carried off that way.”

“You needn’t worry. I’m taking the master along with me.”

He stood then; looked meaningly at her; then went forward. She noted that his two hip pockets bulged.

Slowly the long narrow craft was worked in toward the land. Trackers sculled ashore in sampans and made the great hawsers fast to stakes. Then the crew, with a deal of shouting and many casual blows, were assembled in the long well forward of the mast, where they huddled abjectly.

Keeping around the steersman’s house, Dixie contrived to take in much of the scene. There was quarreling among the soldiers. Tom Sung towered over them, shouting rough orders. The two men that were told off (she judged to guard her and the junk) appeared to be objecting to their part in the affair. Obviously there would be small loot here.

Connor came back over the deck house; stood angrily over her. She sensed the mounting brutality in him. For that matter, his sort and their ways with women were familiar enough to her. She had learned to take brutal men for granted. But it had not occurred to her that Connor would strike her. However, he did. Knocked her to her knees; then to her face; even kicked her as she lay on the deck. He was suddenly loud, wild.

“None o’ this peeking around!” he cried. “Keep your eyes where they belong!” And left her there.

After a little she was able to creep to the rail and peer out through the flowers. Frightened members of the crew were sculling the sampans back and forth, until at length the whole party, every man except the laopan armed, fully assembled, set off inland.

Beyond an unpleasant headache she felt no injury. She sat for a little while; then again looked forward. The two guards were on the deck house, talking excitedly together. While she watched they climbed down, shouted at the huddled crew, fired a careless shot or two into the mass of them that brought down at least one. At length two of the crew went over the side, followed by the soldiers. A moment later the sampan appeared moving toward the shore, the two soldiers loudly urging on the oarsmen.

Dixie, swiftly then, rearranging her disordered hair as she walked, went down into the cabin.

A corridor extended along one side from the laopans quarters under the steersman’s house – sounds of stifled weeping came from there, apparently a woman or a girl – forward to the open space amidships. The rooms all gave on this corridor, the doorways hung with curtains of blue cotton cloth. Into one and another of these rooms she looked There was bentwood furniture and bedding in each – the latter tossed about. On the walls hung neat ideographic mottoes. The grillwork about the windows and over the doors was of a uniform and quaint design.

Connor had taken for himself the rear room There she found, beneath the window a heap of matting and bedding. Thoughtfully, deliberately, she lifted it off, piece by piece, exposing first a foot and leg, then a bony hand, finally the entire figure of what had been Jim Watson, known, of recent years, along Soochow Road and Bubbling Well Road as the Manila Kid. His clothing was slashed and torn in many places. About his middle, and about his head, were wide pools of blood that during a number of hours, evidently, had been drying into the boards of the deck. The neck, she observed, on closer examination, had been cut through nearly to the vertebrae.

During a swift moment she considered the grew-some problem; then carefully replaced the matting and bedding.

She went forward then to the end of the corridor; paused to look in her shopping bag, open the triangular bottle and drop a few of the green pills into the pocket of her middy blouse, under her handkerchief; closed the bag and stepped out on the low midships deck.

The sampan had just returned to the junk. The two soldiers were walking; rapidly inland after Connor’s party. She let herself quickly over the side; stepped into the sampan; waved toward the shore. Meekly the cowed oarsmen obeyed the pantomime order.

She stepped out on the bank, very slim, almost pretty; tossed a Chinese Mexican dollar into the boat, watched, with a faint, reflective smile, the two primitive creatures as they fought over it; then walked briskly, not without a trace of native elegance in her carriage, after the soldiers, lightly swinging her shopping bag.

CHAPTER IX – IN A GARDEN

THE road – narrow, worn to a deep-rutted little canyon – circled a brown hill, rose into a mud-gray village, where a few listless children played among the dogs, and a few apathetic beggars, and vendors of cakes, and wrinkled old women stared at the thin white girl who walked rapidly and alone; wound on below the surface of the cultivated fields; came, at length, to a wall of gray-brick crowned with tiles of bright yellow glaze and a ridge-piece of green, and at last to a gate house with a heavily ornamented roof of timbers and tiles. Other roofs appeared just beyond, and interlacing foliage that was tinged, here and there, with the red and yellow and bronze of autumn.

The great gates, of heavy plank studded with iron spikes, stood open, apparently unattended. Dixie Carmichael paused; pursed her lips. Her coolly searching eyes noted an incandescent light bulb set in the massive lintel. This, perhaps, would be the place. Almost absently, peering through into tiled courtyards, she took two of the green tablets from her pocket; then, holding them in her hand, stepped within, and stood listening. The rustling of the leaves, she heard, as they swayed in a pleasant breeze, and a softly musical tinkling sound; then a murmur that might be voices at a distance and in some confusion; and then, sharply, with an unearthly thrill, the silver scream of a girl… Yes, this would be the place.

The buildings on either hand were silent. Doors stood open. Paper windows were tom here and there, and the woodwork broken in. But the flowers and the dwarf trees from Japan that stood in jars of Ming pottery were undisturbed.

She passed through an inner gate and around a screen of brick and found herself in a park. There was a waterfall in a rockery, and a stream, and a tiny lake. A path led over a series of little arching bridges of marble into the grove beyond; and through the trees there she caught glimpses of elaborate yellow roofs. On either hand stood pai-lows– decorative arches in the pretentious Chinese manner – and beyond each a roofed pavilion built over a bridge… She considered these; after a moment sauntered under the pai-low at her right, mounted the steps and dropped on the ornamented seat behind a leafy vine. Here she was sheltered from view, yet her eyes commanded both the main gate and the way over the marble bridges to the buildings in the grove.

She looked about with a sense of quiet pleasure at the gilded fretwork beneath the curving eaves of the pavilion, the painted scrolls above them, and the smooth found columns of aged nanmu wood that was in color like dead oak leaves and that still exhaled a vague perfume. The tinkling sound set up again as another breeze wandered by; and looking up she saw four small bells of bronze suspended from the eaves… She sat very still, listening, looking, thinking, drawing in with a deep inhalation the exquisite fragrance of the nanmu wood. It might be pleasant, one day, to lease or even buy a home like this. So ran her alert thoughts.

The murmuring from the buildings in the grove continued, now swelling a little, now subsiding. It was not, of itself, an alarming sound, except for an occasional muffled shot. Her quick imagination, however, pictured the scene – they would be running about, calling to one another, beating in doors, rummaging everywhere. The drunkenness would doubtless be already under way. There would be much casual but ingenious cruelty, an orgiastic indulgence in every uttermost thrill of sense. It would be interesting to see; she even considered, her nerves tightening slightly at the thought, strolling back there over the bridges; but held finally to her first impulse and continued waiting here.

A considerable time passed; half an hour or more. Then she glimpsed figures approaching slowly through the grove. They emerged on the farthest of the little marble bridges. One was Tex Connor; the second perhaps – certainly – Tom Sung. They carried armfuls of small boxes, at the sight of which Dixie’s pulse again quickened slightly; for these would be the jewels. Tom appeared to be talking freely; as they crossed the middle bridge he broke into song; and he reeled jovially… Connor walked firmly on ahead.

They stopped by the gate screen. Connor glanced cautiously about; then moved aside into a tiled area that was hidden from the gate and the path by quince bushes. He called to Tom who followed.

Miss Carmichael could look almost directly down at them through the leaves. She watched closely as they hurriedly opened the boxes and filled their pockets with the gems. Tom used a stone to break the golden settings of the larger diamonds, pearls and rubies.

A low-voiced argument followed. She heard Tom say, “I come back, all light. But I got have a girl!” And he lurched away.

Connor, looking angrily after him, reached back to his hip pocket; but reconsidered. He needed Tom, if only as interpreter; and Tom, singing unmusically as he reeled away over the marble bridges, knew it.

Connor waited, standing irresolute, listening, turning his eye toward the gate, then toward the trees behind him. The girl in the pavilion considered him. She had not before observed evidence of fear in the man. But then she had never before seen him in a situation that tested his brain and nerve as well as his animal courage. He was at heart a bully, of course: and she knew that bullies were cowards… What small respect she had at moments felt for Tex left her now. She came down to despising him, as she despised nearly all other men of her acquaintance. Still peering through the leaves, she saw him move a little way toward the gate, then glance, with a start, toward the marble bridges, finally turning back to the remaining boxes.

He opened one of these – it was of yellow lacquer richly ornamented – and drew out what appeared to be a tangle of strings of pearls. He turned it over in his hands; spread it out; felt his pockets; finally unbuttoned his shirt and thrust it in there.

It was at this point that Dixie arose, replaced the green tablets in her pocket, smoothed her skirt, and went lightly down the steps. He did not hear her until she spoke.

“Do you think Tom’ll come back, Tex?”

He whirled so clumsily that he nearly fell among the boxes and the broken and trampled bits of gold and silver; fixed his good eye on her, while the other, of glass, gazed vacantly over her shoulder.

She coolly studied him – the flushed face, bulging pockets, protruding shirt where he had stuffed in those astonishing ropes of pearls.

He said then, vaguely: “What are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d come along. Suppose he stays back there – drinks some more. You’d be sort of up against it, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d be no worse off than you.” He was evasive, and more than a little sullen. She saw that he was foolishly trying to keep his broad person between her and the boxes.

“You couldn’t handle the junk without Tom. Not very well… Look here, Tex, it can’t be very far to the concessions at Hankow. We could pick up a cart, or even walk it.”

“What good would that do?”

“There’ll be steamers down to Shanghai.”

“And there’ll be police to drag us off.”

“How can they? What can they pin on you?” Connor’s eye wavered back toward the grove and the buildings. He was again breathing hard. “After all this..” he muttered. “That old viceroy’ll be up here, you know. With his mob, too. And there’s plenty of people here to tell…” He was trying now to hold an arm across his middle in a position that would conceal the treasure there.

Her glance followed the motion, and for a moment a faintly mocking smile hovered about her thin mouth. She said: “Saving those pearls for me, Tex?”

He stared at her, fixed her with that one small eye, but offered not a word. A moment later, however, nervously signaling her to be still he brushed by and peeped out around the quinces.

“What is it?” she asked quickly; then moved to his side.

Immediately beyond the farthest of the marble bridges stood a group of ten or twelve soldiers in drunkenly earnest argument. Above them towered the powerful shoulders and small round head of Tom Sung. In the one quick glance she caught an impression of rifles slung across sturdy backs, of bayonets that seemed, at that distance, oddly dark in color; an impression, too, of confused minds and a growing primitive instinct for violence. Tom and another swayed toward the bridge; others drew them back and pointed toward the buildings they had left. The argument waxed. Voices were shrilly emphatic.

“Looks bad,” said the girl at Connor’s shoulder. “You’ve let ‘em get out of hand, Tex.” Then, as she saw him nervously measuring with his eye the width of the open space between the quinces and the gate screen, she added, “Thinking of making a run for it, Tex?”

He slowly swung that eye on her now; and for no reason pushed her roughly away. “It’s none of your business what I’m going to do,” he replied roughly.

But the voice was husky, and curiously light in quality. And the eye wavered away from her intent look. This creature fell far short of the Tex Connor of old. She spoke sharply.

“Come up into this summer-house, Tex!” she indicated it with an upward jerk of her head. “They won’t see us there, at first. You didn’t see me. You’ve got your pistols. You can give me one. We ought to be able to stand off a few Chinese drunks.”

She could see that he was fumbling about for courage, for a plan, in a mind that had broken down utterly. His growl of – “I’m not giving you any pistol!” – was the flimsiest of cover. And so she left him, choosing a moment when that loud argument beyond the bridges was at its height to run lightly up the steps and into the pavilion.

From this point she looked down on the thick-minded Connor as he struggled between cupidity, fear and the bluffing pride that was so deep a strain in the man. The one certain fact was that he couldn’t purposelessly wait there, with Tom Sung leading these outlawed soldiers to a deed he feared to undertake alone… They were coming over the bridges now, Tom in the lead, lurching along and brandishing his revolver, the others unslinging their rifles. The argument had ceased; they were ominously quiet.

Dixie got her tablets out again; then sat waiting, that faint mocking smile again touching the corners of her mouth. But the smile now meant an excitement bordering on the thrill she had lately envied the savage folk in the grove. Such a thrill had moved those coldeyed women who sat above the combat of gladiators in the Colosseum and with thumbs down awaited the death agony of a fallen warrior. It had been respectable then; now it was the perverse pleasure of a solitary social outcast. But to this girl who could be moved by no simple pleasure it came as a gratifying substitute for happiness. Her own danger but added a sharp edge to the exquisite sensation. It was the ultimate gamble, in a life in which only gambling mattered.

Connor was fumbling first at a hip pocket where a pistol bulged, then at a side pocket that bulged with precious stones. His eye darted this way and that his cheeks had changed in color to a pasty gray. The girl thought for a moment that he had actually gone out of his head.

His action, when it finally came, was grotesquely romantic. She thought, in a flash, of the adventure novels she had so often seen him reading. It was to her absurd; even madly comic. For with those bulging pockets and that gray face, a criminal run to earth by his cruder confederates, he fell back on dignity. He strode directly out into the path, with a sort of mock firmness, and, like a policeman on a busy corner, raised his hand.

Even at that he might have impressed the soldiers; for he was white, and had been their vital and vigorous leader, and they were yellow and low-bred and drunk. As it was, they actually stopped, just over the nearest bridge; gave the odd appearance of huddling uncertainly there. But Connor could not hold the pose. He broke; looked wildly about; started, puffing like a spent runner, up the steps of the pavilion where the girl, leaning slightly forward, drawing in her breath sharply through parted lips, looked through the leaves.

Several of the rifles cracked then; she heard bullets sing by. And Connor fell forward on the steps, clawed at them for a moment, and lay still in a slowly widening pool of thick blood. He had not so much as drawn a weapon. Tex Connor was gone.

They came on, laughing, with a good deal of rough banter, and gathered up the jewels. Tom and another mounted the steps to the body and went through the pockets of his trousers for the jewels that were there and the pistols. As there was no coat they did not look further. And then, merrily, they went back over the marble bridges to the buildings in the grove where were still, perhaps, liquor and women.

When the last of their shouts had died out, when laying her head against the fragrant wood she could hear again the musical tinkling of the bronze bells and the pleasant murmuring of the tiny waterfall and the sighing of the leaves, Dixie slipped down to the body, fastidiously avoiding the blood. It was heavy; she exerted all her wiry strength in rolling it partly over. Then, drawing out the curious net of pearls she let the body roll back.

Returning to her sheltered seat she spread on her lap the amazing garment; for a garment of some sort it appeared to be. There was even a row of golden clasps set with very large diamonds. At a rough estimate she decided that there were all of three thousand to four thousand perfect pearls in the numerous strings. Turning and twisting it about, she hit on the notion of drawing it about her shoulders and found that it settled there like a cape. It was, indeed, just that – a cape of pearls. She did not know that it was the only garment of its precise sort in the world, that it had passed from one royal person to another until, after the death of the Old Buddha in 1908 it fell into the hands of his excellency, Kang Yu.

She took it off; stood erect; pulled out her loosely hanging middy blouse; and twisting the strings into a rope fastened it about her waist, rearranging the blouse over it. The concealment was perfect.

She sat again, then, to think out the next step Returning to the junk was cut of the question. It would be better to get somehow up to the concessions and trust to her wits to explain her presence there For Tex had been shrewd enough about that. The concessions were a small bit of earth with but one or two possible hotels, full of white folk and fuller of gossip. She had had her little difficulties with the consuls as with the rough-riding American judge who took his itinerant court from port to port announcing firmly that he purposed ridding the East of such “American girls” as she. Dawley Kane would surely be there, and other survivors of the fire… It all meant picking up a passage down the river at the earliest possible moment; and running grave chances at that But her great strength lay in her impregnable self-confidence. She feared herself least of all.