|IN making their escape from the steamer, Tex Connor and the Manila
Kid seized one of the small boats, manning, one at either end, the
tackle-falls. Connor was quick, rough, profane. The Kid, breathless with
excitement, hesitant, glancing back over the rail for a thinly girlish
face that did not, then, appear, worked with ten thumbs at the ropes.
Connor's end, the boat, fell first, a short way, nearly pitching him
out. He cursed this futile man, his jackal, roundly; then clung to the
tackle as the stern fell.... The Kid moaned with pain as the slipping
hemp burned the skin off his fingers, but held it just short of
disaster.
Hot red flames licked out overhead as the boat jerkily dropped. The
women were screaming up there. A white man, the second mate, leaned
over, swearing vigorously at them. They passed an open freight gangway,
where bodies lay.
“Ready, now!” cried Connor. “Let go with me!”
“Wait a minute, can't you?” whined the Kid. He was peering into the dark
interior of the steamer; grasping a moment more; wrapping a handkerchief
about his left hand. “My God! Can't a fellow tie up his hand.”
A thin blue figure appeared, stepped lightly over into the boat and
dropped on a middle thwart.
“Dixie!” cried the Kid in falsetto.
She wore a cap, and carried an oddly lady-like shopping bag.
“Where'd you come from?” growled Connor.
“I saw you start,” said the girl casually. “Come on--let's get away.”
Connor stared at her; then turned back to his work. The boat struck the
water and drifted rapidly away down-stream. Connor, roaring angrily at
the Kid, got out an oar.
“What are you doing?” asked Miss Carmichael very quietly.
“Going ashore?” said Connor.
“Oh, come, Tex!” said she. “Use your head.”
He looked sharply, inquiringly, doubtingly at her.
“You two better row straight down-stream as hard as you can,” she added.
“You can bet Tom Sung and that gang aren't going to show themselves at
Kiu Kiang. They've stopped somewhere below here.”
The Kid, who was nursing his hand, looked up; wrinkled his low forehead
that was hatless, and then softly whistled. Connor made no remark, but
continued studying the girl with his one eye. Finally, with an effort at
reasserting his authority, he growled:
“Take an oar, Jim!”
“But my hands! My God, that rope took all the--”
“Do you expect me to do the rowing, Jim?” said Miss Carmichael.
The Kid yielded then. The girl settled herself comfortably in the stem,
looking back at the fire. Soon they were out of the circle of light.
Suddenly Connor drew in his oar; stowed it away.
“Dixie,” he remarked. “You've made up your mind to go through with this
business, eh?”
“Certainly,” she replied.
“You'll have to come across if you want my help. I won't go it blind.”
Miss Carmichael glanced back at the red glow in the sky, then out toward
the slightly paling East.
“I'll tell you by sunrise,” she said. “The thing won't keep much longer
than that, anyhow. It'll have to be fairly quick work.”
“All right,” said Connor. “That's an agreement. Now I'm going to take
a nap. This current's taking us down fast enough. When you sight Tom's
outfit, wake me up.” With which he curled up in the bow, and soon was
snoring.
The Kid stowed his own oar, and crept to the girl's side.
“Careful!” she whispered. “If he should wake up....” She extricated
herself from an encircling arm. “Jim--sit still now!--It's time you and
I had an understanding. I need you, and I'm going to use you. I don't
propose to have you all steamed up, either. You'll need all the nerve
you've got. Perhaps more. I'm not at all sure that you're big enough for
what you've got to do. That's the difficulty.”
“You promised, Dixie.” He was still absurdly breathless. “You said it
was a trade--if I'd stick to you, you'd stick to me!”
“Certainly. But it's during the next eight or ten hours that you're
going to find out what sticking to me, means. You can have me, all
right, Jim, but you've got to earn me.”
“I guess I'll earn you, all right.”
“I wonder if you have the courage.”
“By God, for you, Dixie--”
Her hand fell lightly on his; and her voice, very small and calm, broke
in with: “Supposing I told you to kill a man. Would you do it?”
She heard, felt, his breath stop. Then he whispered, with one swift
glance at the sleeping Connor: “If I say yes, Dixie, will you kiss me?
Right now?”
She pressed her lips slightly; then replied: “No. Not yet. And you
needn't kill anybody until I tell you to.”
“Is it--is it”--his whisper was huskier--“is it--him, Dixie?” He was
staring with less certainty now, at Connor.
“No”--said she slowly--“nobody in particular. But anything may happen
to-night, Jim. And we can't falter. Not now.”
She let him press her hand during a brief moment; then made him resume
his seat. And from behind lowered lids she watched him.
Once he came back, to ask hoarsely: “You said he was rough with you,
Dix. Did he--did you and he--my God, if I thought that Tex had--”
She caught his shoulder and placed a hand over his mouth: held him thus
while she said: “If he catches you back here, Jim, he'll kill you. No
fear! Now you go back there and show me that you can play cards. You're
sitting in the biggest game of your life. Jim Watson.”
He crept back; puzzled, something hurt. There was a sting in her voice.
Could it be that the girlish Dixie was as cold-blooded as that? Treating
him like a child! Hadn't she any feelings? The question came around and
around in his muddy brain, confused with frantic uprushes of jealousy
against the big man who slept and snored in the bow.... hadn't she any
feelings?.... She was excitingly desirable.
Just as a conquest, now; something to brag about.
It was Dixie who sighted the soldiers, sitting in heated argument on the
bank not a hundred yards below a big junk that lay moored to stakes in
an eddy. She called sharply to Connor; they pulled straight in beside
the other two boats.
Tom Sung came to the water's edge, a rifle (with set bayonet) in his
hand. Connor stepped out, holding the boat. The Kid, with a furtive,
glance at the big yellow fighter, and the abruptly silent shadowy group
on the bank, cautiously got out an automatic pistol and held it beside
him on the thwart.
Dixie said sharply, for Connor's ears: “Put up that gun, Jim!”
The Kid obeyed.
She spoke then to Connor direct.
“Tell your man we want that junk,” she said. “Get out these other boats
and take it, quick. Then we'll start back up-stream.”
For a moment Connor was nonplussed. The girl's assumption of authority
was complete. Even the slow-thinking Tom Sung felt her presence and
turned abruptly from himself toward her.
But, though angered, Connor controlled himself. She meant, after all,
business. Dixit wasn't a girl to make careless mistakes. She knew, none
better, what any success, little or big, might be worth in risks run.
So, speaking sharply, he gave his orders to Tom.
Quietly the twenty or more outlaw soldiers came down to the boats and
pushed off. Rowing and paddling they crept up on the junk. A drowsy
watchman peeped over at the rail, forward.
Then they were alongside. Catching at the mooring poles, the soldiers
stepped out on the wide sponson that curved down, amidships, nearly to
the water-line. Quickly, rifles slung on backs but revolvers at their
girdles and knives in their teeth, they went up the ropes hand over
hand, their bare feet dinging monkeylike to the smooth side.
There were cries aboard now, and a confusion of running feet. The first
soldier to get a leg over the rail came tumbling back with a split
skull, bounding off the sponson into the water and sinking as he drifted
away.
Connor and the Kid caught together at the sponson. Connor stepped
out; and calling on a belated soldier to give him a back, climbed
laboriously, puffing but determined, up over the rail, pausing at the
top only to call back for the Kid to follow.
But that worthy hesitated, crouching, clutching at the boat painter.
“I've got to hold the boat here!” he shouted back; but Connor had
disappeared.
There was much noise up there now--shouts, groans, appalling screeches,
shots, and that insistent pattering of feet.
Dixie, watching critically the crouching figure on the sponson--for
the Kid was shivering and making little sounds, obviously caught in the
acute physical distress into which extreme sudden fear will at times
plunge a man--called abruptly: “Jim--look up!”
A nearly naked Chinese was lowering himself in a deliberate gingerly
manner down a moving rope nearly overhead.
“Kill him, Jim!” Dixie added.
Singling out her clear voice from the tumult, the yellow man looked
fearfully down.
The Kid, at the same moment, looked up; then, fumbling in a curiously
absent way for his pistol, glanced back at Dixie.
“I'll hold the boat,” said she. “Go on--kill him!” She sat quietly, one
thin arm reached out to the nearest mooring pole, looking steadily up.
The Kid, nerving himself, suddenly burst into a storm of wild oaths and
shot three times into the body above him. At the first shot the man
slipped down a little way.
“Push him away!” Dixie cried sharply. “I don't want him falling into the
boat!”
He was shooting again; and then with an effort diverted the falling
body.
Dixie got up, and stood steadying herself in the gently rocking boat;
and the Kid--quit; out of breath now, and muttering, as he fondled the
hot pistol, “Well, I did it, didn't I? I did what you said!”--found in
her eyes, shining through the dusk of early dawn, a bright white
light that was, to him, disconcerting and yet profoundly thrilling. He
shivered again as he felt the spell of her strange genius. What a woman,
he was thinking again, but wildly, madly, now, to conquer.
And she was saying, “I guess your nerve's all right.”
Other shining yellow bodies were tumbling over the side and floating
away.
“Help me up there, Jim!” she commanded. “Never mind tying the boat--let
it go! It's only a giveaway. Quick--give me a hand!”
She was beside him on the sponson. He clasped her in his arms; but
before he could kiss her she slapped him sharply. “Keep your head!” she
commanded. “Put me up there!”
He lifted her high; until she could kneel, then stand, on his shoulder.
She went over the rail as lightly as a boy. She found the soldiers in
small groups cornering one or another of the crew, torturing and hacking
at them with bayonets and knives, and during a brief moment looked
on with a curious keen interest. The master, or _laopan_, crouched,
whimpering, on the poop.... She saw Connor standing by the mast, just
above the well, amidships and forward, where were huddled the survivors
among the crew (their number surprisingly large); Connor was panting,
revolver in hand, and scowling about him.
Dixie stepped to his side.
“You've got to save enough of this crew to work the boat up the river,
Tex,” she remarked.
“I'm saving enough of 'em,” he replied gruffly. “We've only killed a
dozen or so. There was more'n a hundred.”
The heavily evil-looking Tom Sung reluctantly detached himself from one
of the groups and came over, wiping his bayonet casually on his sleeve.
Mr. Connor roughly ordered to gather his men together and make ready to
get under way. To the Kid, who came awkwardly over the rail just then,
Connor gave merely a glance. Then to Dixie, he said:
“Come up here!”
He led the way up the steps with the carven hand rail to the poop; gave
the _laopan_ a careless kick; stepped around the steersman's covered pit
and out astern on the high projecting gallery.
“Now,” he said, fixing his one eye on Her, “where's this place?”
She turned away to the pots of flowers that stood closely spaced just
within the elaborate woodwork of the railing. There were chrysanthemums,
white, yellow and deep Indian red; highly cultivated double dahlias;
red lotus blossoms; and tuberoses that filled the fresh morning air with
their heavy perfume. “Well?” Connor added explosively.
“I said I'd tell you by sunrise, Tex,” she said, coolly pleasant; and
hummed, very softly, a music-hall tune, bending over a spreading lotus
blossom with every appearance of ingenuous girlish interest. After a
moment, she went on, “The thing now is to get this junk up the river as
fast as it will go.”
“Where to?” He was controlling his voice, but his face, usually
expressionless, was brutally clouded.... “Push me just a little farther,
Dix, and you'll go overboard. And there won't be any flowers at the
funeral. By God, I'm not sure I wouldn't enjoy it. You got me into this
business! Now if you--”
“Better control yourself, Tex,” said she; straightening up before
him. “I may have got you in, but it's a real job now. You've got to go
through. And you're going to need me. The place is a few miles this side
of a town called Huang Chau, on the north hank.”
“Beyond Hankow?”
“No, below. It's only a matter of hours getting up there, if you'll just
get this junk started.”
“How'll we know it when we get there?”
“All we've got to do is ask a native, anywhere along the bank, where
Kang Yu lives--his old home.”
“Who's he?”
“The viceroy of Nanking. Why don't you use that eye of yours once in a
while, Tex--look around you a little?”
Slowly his mind, so quick at the vicious games of his own race, picked
up and related the facts. His face relaxed, as he thought, into the
familiar wooden expression.
“You're sure the stones are there?” he asked, quietly now.
She nodded; hummed again; caressed the flowers.
“All right, Dix,” he said then, as he turned to go forward, “that sounds
square enough. I guess I can handle it all right. And I'll see that you
get your share all hunky dory.”
“What are you figuring my share to be?” she asked, glancing casually up
from a lotus blossom.
“Oh,” he cried without hesitation, almost playfully, “you and I aren't
going to have any trouble about that.”
He went then; and she lingered among the flowers.
From beyond the long deck house came shouts and wailing. The great
sweeps were got overside. The mooring poles were hoisted out and lashed
along the sponsons. The clumsy craft swung out into the river and moved
slowly forward.
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.