Fireside Personal Study Bible Nabre Fireside

Catholic Publishing Us Catholic Conference

download

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-personal-study-bible-
nabre-fireside-catholic-publishing-us-catholic-
conference-61003460

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Fireside Personal Study Bible Nabre Fireside Catholic Publishing Us

Catholic Conference

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-personal-study-bible-nabre-
fireside-catholic-publishing-us-catholic-conference-55378842

The Bro Code 1st Fireside Trade Paperback Ed Barney Stinson

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-bro-code-1st-fireside-trade-
paperback-ed-barney-stinson-1398292

The Positive Principle Today 1st Fireside Ed Dr Norman Vincent Peale

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-positive-principle-today-1st-
fireside-ed-dr-norman-vincent-peale-1642186

Enthusiasm Makes The Difference 1st Fireside Ed Dr Norman Vincent

Peale

https://ebookbell.com/product/enthusiasm-makes-the-difference-1st-
fireside-ed-dr-norman-vincent-peale-1920418
Fireside Food For Cold Winter Night Lizzie Kamenetzky

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-food-for-cold-winter-night-
lizzie-kamenetzky-48975290

Fireside School And Church Edition Nabre Publishing Fireside Catholic

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-school-and-church-edition-
nabre-publishing-fireside-catholic-55378848

Fireside And Stone Ke Oconnor

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-and-stone-ke-oconnor-55509040

Fireside And Shadow Ke Oconnor

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-and-shadow-ke-oconnor-57478040

Fireside Gothic Taylor Andrew

https://ebookbell.com/product/fireside-gothic-taylor-andrew-42453384
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Red and
Gold
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: In Red and Gold

Author: Samuel Merwin

Illustrator: Cyrus Leroy Baldridge

Release date: May 2, 2016 [eBook #51974]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously

provided by the Internet Archive

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN RED AND

GOLD ***
IN RED AND GOLD
 By Samuel Merwin
Frontispiece by Cyrus Leroy Baldridge
A. L. Burt Company Publishers, New York

1921
 TO

CHARLES B. TOWNS, NEW YORK AND PEKING

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I—FELLOW VOYAGERS
CHAPTER II—BETWEEN THE WORLDS
CHAPTER III—MISS HUI FEI
CHAPTER IV—INTRIGUE
CHAPTER V—RESURGENCE
CHAPTER VI—CONFLAGRATION
CHAPTER VII—THE INSCRUTABLE WEST
CHAPTER VIII—ABOARD THE YELLOW JUNK
CHAPTER IX—IN A GARDEN
CHAPTER X—YOUTH
CHAPTER XI—THE LANDSCAPE SCROLL OF CHAO MENG-FU
CHAPTER XII—AT THE HOUR OF THE TIGER
CHAPTER XIII—HIS EXCELLENCY SPEAKS
CHAPTER XIV—THE WORLD OF FACT
CHAPTER XV—IN A COURTYARD
 CHAPTER I—FELLOW VOYAGERS

O
N a night in October, 1911, the river steamer Yen Hsin lay
alongside the godown, or warehouse, of the Chinese
Navigation Company at Shanghai. Her black hull bulked large
in the darkness that was spotted with inadequate electric lights. Her
white cabins, above, lighted here and there, loomed high and
ghostly, extending as far as the eye could easily see from the narrow
wharf beneath. Swarming continuously across the gangplanks,
chanting rhythmically to keep the quick shuffling step, crews of
coolies carried heavy boxes and bales swung from bamboo poles.
During the evening the white passengers were coming aboard by
ones and twos and finding their cabins, all of which were forward on
the promenade deck, grouped about the enclosed area that was to
be at once their dining-room and “social hall.” Here, within a narrow
space, bounded by strips of outer deck and a partition wall, these
few casual passengers were to be caught, willy-nilly, in a sort of
passing comradeship. For the greater part of this deck, amidships
and aft, was screened off for the use of traveling Chinese officials,
and the two lower decks would be crowded with lower class natives
and freight. And, not unnaturally, in the minds of nearly all the white
folk, as they settled for the night, arose questions as to the others
aboard. For strange beings of many nations dig a footing of sorts on
the China Coast, and odd contrasts occur when any few are thrown
together by a careless fate.... And so, thinking variously in their
separate cabins of the meeting to come, at breakfast about the
single long table, and of the days of voyaging into the heart of
oldest China, these passengers, one by one, fell asleep; while
through open shutters floated quaint odors and sounds from the
tangle of sampans and slipper-boats that always line the curving
bund and occasional shouts and songs from late revelers passing
along the boulevard beyond the rows of trees.
 It was well after midnight when the Yen Hsin drew in her lines and
swung off into the narrow channel of the Whangpoo. Drifting
sampans, without lights, scurried out of her path. With an American
captain on the strip of promenade deck, forward, that served for a
bridge, a yellow pilot, and Scotch engineers below decks, she slipped
down with the tide, past the roofed-over opium hulks that were
anchored out there, past the dimly outlined stone buildings of the
British and American quarter, on into the broader Wusung. Here a
great German mail liner lay at anchor, lighted from stem to stem.
Farther down lay three American cruisers; and below these a junk,
drifting dimly by with ribbed sails flapping and without the sign of a
light, built high astern, like the ghost of a medieval trader.
“There's his lights now!” Thus the captain to a huge figure of a
man who stood, stooping a little, beside him, peering out at the
river. And the captain, a stocky little man with hands in the pockets
of a heavy jacket, added—“The dirty devil!”
Indeed, a small green light showed now on the junk's quarter; and
then she was gone astern.
After a silence, the captain said: “You may as well turn in.”
“Perhaps I will,” replied the other. “Though I get a good deal more
sleep than I need on the river. And very little exercise.”
“That's the devil of this life, of course. Look a' me—I'm fat!” The
captain spoke in a rough, faintly blustering tone, perhaps in a
nervous response to the well-modulated voice of his mate, “Must
make even more difference to you—the way you've lived. And at
that, after all, you ain't a slave to the river.”
“No.... in a sense, I'm not.” The mate fell silent.
There were, of course, vast differences in the degrees of
misfortune among the flotsam and jetsam of the coast. Captain
Benjamin, now, had a native wife and five or six half-caste children
tucked away somewhere in the Chinese city of Shanghai.
“We've gut quite a bunch aboard this trip,” offered the captain.
“Indeed?”
 “One or two well-known people. There's our American millionaire,
Dawley Kane. Took four outside cabins. His son's with him, and a
secretary, and a Japanese that's been up with him before. Wonder if
it's a pleasure trip—or if it means that the Kane interests are getting
hold up the river. It might, at that. They bought the Cantey line, you
know, in nineteen eight. Then there's Tex Connor, and his old
sidekick the Manila Kid, and a couple of women schoolteachers from
home, and six or eight others—customs men and casuals. And Dixie
Carmichael—she's aboard. Quite a bunch! And His Nibs gets on
tomorrow at Nanking.”
“Kang, you mean?”
“The same. There's a story that he's ordered up to Peking. They
were talking about it yesterday at the office.”
“Do you think he's in trouble?”
“Can't say. But if you ask me, it don't look like such a good time to
be easy on these agitators, now does it? And they tell me he's been
letting 'em off, right and left.”
The mate stood musing, holding to the rail. “It's a problem,” he
replied, after a little, rather absently.
“The funny thing is—he ain't going on through. Not this trip,
anyhow. We're ordered to put him off at his old place, this side of
Huang Chau. Have to use the boats. You might give them a look-
see.”
“They've gossiped about Kang before this at Shanghai.”
“Shanghai,” cried the captain, with nervous irrelevancy, “is full of
information about China—and it's all wrong!” He added then, “Seen
young Black lately?”
The mate moved his head in the negative.
“Consul-general sent him down from Hankow, after old Chang
stopped that native paper of his. I ran into him yesterday, over to
the bank. He says the revolution's going to break before summer.”
The mate made no reply to this. Every trip the captain talked in
this manner. His one deep fear was that the outbreak might take
place while he was far up the river.
It had been supposed by all experienced observers of the Chinese
scene, that the Manchu Dynasty would not long survive the famous
old empress dowager, the vigorous and imperious little woman who
was known throughout a rational and tolerant empire, not without a
degree of affection, as “the Old Buddha.” She had at the time of the
present narrative been dead two years and more; the daily life of the
infant emperor was in the control of a new empress dowager, that
Lung Yu who was notoriously overriding the regent and dictating
such policies of government as she chose in the intervals between
protracted periods of palace revelry.
The one really powerful personage in Peking that year was the
chief eunuch, Chang Yuan-fu, a former actor, notoriously the
empress's personal favorite, who catered to her pleasures, robbed
the imperial treasury of vast sums, wreaked ugly vengeance on
critical censors, and publicly insulted dukes of the royal house.
All this was familiar. The Manchu strain had dwindled out; and
while an empress pleased her jaded appetites by having an actor cut
with the lash in her presence for an indifferent performance, all
South China, from Canton to the Yangtze, seethed with the steadily
increasing ferment of revolution. Conspirators ranged the river and
the coast. At secret meetings in Singapore, Tokio, San Francisco and
New York, new and bloody history was planned. The oldest and
hugest of empires was like a vast crater that steamed and bubbled
faintly here and there as hot vital forces accumulated beneath.
The mate, pondering the incalculable problem, finally spoke: “I
suppose, if this revolt should bring serious trouble to Kang, it might
affect you and me as well.”
The captain flared up, the blustering note rising higher in his
voice. “But somebody'll have to run the boats, won't they?”
“If they run at all.”
His impersonal tone seemed to irritate further the captain's
troubled spirit. “If they run at all, eh? It's all right for you—you can
go it alone—you haven't got children on your mind, young ones!”
 The big man was silent again. A great hand gripped a stanchion
tightly as he gazed out at the dark expanse of water. The captain,
glancing around at him, looking a second time at that hand, turned
away, with a little sound.
“I will say good night,” remarked the mate abruptly, and left his
chief to his uncertain thoughts.
The steamer moved deliberately out into the wide estuary of the
Yangtze, which is at this point like a sea. Squatting at the edge of
the deck, outside the rail, the pilot spoke musically to the Chinese
quartermaster. Slowly, a little at a time, as she plowed the ruffling
water, the steamer swung off to the northwest to begin her long
journey up the mighty river to Hankow where the passengers would
change for the smaller Ichang steamer, or for the express to Peking
over the still novel trunk railway. And if, as happened not
infrequently, the Yen Hsin should break down or stick in the mud,
the Peking passengers would wait a week about the round stove in
the old Astor House at Hankow for the next express.
A mighty river indeed, is the Yangtze. During half the year battle-
ships of reasonably deep draught may reach Hankow. In the heyday
of the sailing trade clippers out of New York and blunt lime-juicers
out of Liverpool were any day sights from the bund there. Through a
busy and not seldom bloody century the merchants of a clamorous
outside world have roved the great river (where yellow merchants of
the Middle Kingdom, in sampan, barge and junk, roved fifty
centuries before them) with rich cargoes of tea (in leaden chests
that bore historic ideographs on the enclosing matting)—with hides
and horns and coal from Hupeh and furs and musk from far-away
Szechuen, with soya beans and rice and bristles and nutgalls and
spices and sesamum, with varnish and tung oil and vegetable tallow,
with cotton, ramie, rape and hemp, with copper, quicksilver, slate,
lead and antimony, with porcelains and silk. Along this river that to-
day divides an empire into two vast and populous domains a
thousand thousand fortunes have been gained and lost, rebellions
and wars have raged, famines have blighted whole peoples. Forts,
pagodas and palaces have lined its banks. The gilded barges of
emperors have drifted idly on its broad bosom. Exquisite painted
beauties have found mirrors in its neighboring canals. Its waters
drain to-day the dusty red plain where Lady Ch'en, the Helen, of
China, rocked a throne and died.
The morning sun rode high. Soft-footed cabin stewards in blue
robes removed the long red tablecloth and laid a white. By ones and
twos the passengers appeared from their cabins or from the breezy
deck and took their seats, eying one another with guarded curiosity
as they bowed a morning greeting.
Miss Andrews, of Indianapolis, stepped out from her cabin through
a narrow corridor, and then, at sight of the table, stopped short,
while her color rose slightly. Miss Andrews was slender, a year or so
under thirty, and, in a colorless way, pretty. Shy and sensitive, the
scene before her was one her mind's eye had failed to picture; the
seats about the long table were half filled, and entirely with men.
She saw, in that one quick look, the face of a young German
between those of two Englishmen. A remarkably thin man in a check
suit looked up and for an instant fixed furtive eyes on hers. Just
beyond him sat a big man, with a round wooden face and one glass
eye; he turned his head with his eyes to look at her. A quiet man of
fifty-odd, with gray hair, a nearly white mustache that was cropped
close, and the expression of quiet satisfaction that only wealth and
settled authority can give, was putting a spoonful of condensed milk
into his coffee. Next to him sat a young man—very young, certainly
not much more than twenty or twenty-one—perhaps his son (the
aquiline nose and slightly receding but wide and full forehead were
the same)—rubbing out a cigarette on his butter plate. He had been
smoking before breakfast. She remembered these two now; they
had been at the Astor House in Shanghai; they were the Kanes, of
New York, the famous Kanes. They called the son, “Rocky”—Rocky
Kane.
Unable to take in more, Miss Andrews stepped back a little way
into the corridor, deciding to wait for her traveling companion, Miss
Means, of South Bend. She could hardly go out there alone and sit
down with all those men.
 But just then a door opened and closed; and across the way,
coming directly, easily, out into the diningroom, Miss Andrews beheld
the surprising figure of a slim girl—or a girl she appeared at first
glance—of nineteen or twenty, wearing a blue, middy blouse and
short blue shirt. Her black hair was drawn loosely together at the
neck and tied with a bow of black ribbon. Her somewhat pale face,
with its thin line of a mouth, straight nose, curving black eyebrows
and oddly pale eyes, was in some measure attractive. She took her
seat at the table without hesitation, acknowledging the reserved
greetings of various of the men with a slight inclination of the head.
It seemed to Miss Andrews that she might now go on in there. But
the thought that some of these men had surely noticed her
confusion was disconcerting; and so it was a relief to hear Miss
Means pattering on behind her. For that firmly thin little woman had
fought life to a standstill and now, except in the moments of prim
severity that came unaccountably into possession of her thoughts,
found it dryly amusing. They took their seats, these two little ladies,
Miss Means laying her copy of Things Chinese beside her coffee cup;
and Miss Andrews tried to bow her casual good mornings as the
curious girl in the middy blouse had done. The girl, by the way,
seemed a very little older at close view.
Miss Andrews stole glimpses, too, at young Mr. Rocky Kane. He
was a handsome boy, with thick chestnut hair from which he had not
wholly succeeded in brushing the curl, but she was not sure that she
liked the flush on his cheeks, or the nervous brightness of the eyes,
or the expression about the mouth. There had been stories floating
about the hotel in Shanghai. He plainly lacked discipline. But she
saw that he might easily fascinate a certain sort of woman.
A door opened, and in from the deck came an extraordinarily tall
man, stooping as he entered. On his cap, in gilt, was lettered, “1st
Mate.” He took the seat opposite Mr. Kane, senior, next to the head
of the table. It seemed to Miss Andrews that she had never seen so
tall a man; he must have stood six feet five or six inches. He was
solid, broad of shoulder, a magnificent specimen of manhood. And
though the hair was thin on top of his head, and his grave quiet face
exhibited the deep lines of middle age, he moved with almost the
springy-step of a boy. If others at the table were difficult to place on
the scale of life, this mate was the most difficult of all. With that
strong reflective face, and the bearing of one who knows only good
manners (though he said nothing at all after his first courteously
spoken, “Good morning!”) he could not have been other than a
gentleman—Miss Andrews felt that—an American gentleman! Yet his
position.... mate of a river steamer in China....!
The atmosphere about the table was constrained throughout the
meal. The Chinese stewards padded softly about. The one-eyed man
stared around the table without the slightest expression on his
impassive face. The girl in the middy blouse kept her head over her
plate. Miss Andrews once caught Rocky Kane glancing at her with an
expression nearly as furtive as that of the thin man in the check suit.
It was after this small incident that young Kane began helping her to
this and that; and, when they rose, followed her out to her deck
chair and insisted on tucking her up in her robe.
“These fall breezes are pretty sharp on the river,” he said. “But
say, maybe it isn't hot in summer.”
“I suppose it is,” murmured Miss Andrews.
“I've been out here a couple of times with the pater. You'll find the
river interesting. Oh, not down here”—he indicated the wide
expanse of muddy water and the low-lying, distant shore—“but
beyond Chinkiang and Nanking, where it's narrower. Lots of quaint
sights. The ports are really fascinating. We stop a lot, you know. At
Wuhu the water beggars come out in tubs.”
“In tubs!” breathed Miss Andrews.
Miss Means joined them then, book under arm; and met his offer
to tuck her up with a crisply pointed, “No, thank you!”
He soon drifted away.
Said Miss Andrews: “Weren't you a little hard on him, Gerty?”
“My dear,” replied Miss Means severely—her Puritan vein strongly
uppermost—“that young man won't do. Not at all. I saw him myself,
one night at the Astor House, going into one of those private dining-
rooms with a woman who—well, her character, or lack of it, was
unmistakable!... Right there in the hotel.... under his father's eyes.
That's what too much money will do to a young man, if you ask me!”
“Oh....!” breathed Miss Andrews, looking out with startled eyes at
the gulls.
It was mid-afternoon when Captain Benjamin remarked to his first
mate: “Tex Connor's got down to work, Mr. Duane. Better try to stop
it, if you don't mind. They're in young Kane's cabin—sixteen.”
Number sixteen was the last cabin aft in the port side, next the
canvas screen that separated upper class white from upper class
yellow. The wooden shutters had been drawn over the windows and
the light turned on within. Cigarette smoke drifted thickly out.
They were slow to open. Doane heard the not unfamiliar voice of
the Manila Kid advising against it. He had to knock repeatedly. They
were crowded together in the narrow space between berth and
couch, a board across their knees—Connor twisting his head to fix
his one eye on the intruder, the Kid, in his check suit, a German of
the customs and Rocky Kane. There were cards, chips and a heap of
money in American and English notes and gold.
“What is it?” cried Kane. “What do you want?”
“You'd better stop this,” said the mate quietly.
“Oh, come, we're just having a friendly game! What right have
you to break into a private room, anyway?”
The mate, stooping within the doorway, took the boy in with
thoughtful eyes, but did not reply directly.
Connor, with another look upward, picked up the cards, and with
the uncanny mental quickness of a practised croupier redistributed
the heap of money to its original owners, and squeezed out without
a word, the mate moving aside for him. The German left sulkily. The
Kid snapped his fingers in disgust, and followed.
Doane was moving away when the Kid caught his elbow. He
asked: “Did Benjamin send you around?”
Doane inclined his head.
 “Running things with a pretty high hand, you and him!”
“Keep away from that boy,” was the quiet reply.
The thin man looked up at the grave strong face above the
massive shoulders; hesitated; walked away. The mate was again
about to leave when young Kane spoke. He was in the doorway now,
leaning there, hands in pockets, his eyes blazing with indignation
and injured pride.
“Those men were my guests!” he cried.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Kane, to disturb your private affairs, but—”
“Why did you do it, then?”
“The captain will not allow Tex Connor to play cards on this boat.
At least, not without a fair warning.”
The boy's face pictured the confusion in his mind, as he wavered
from anger through surprise into youthful curiosity.
“Oh....” he murmured. “Oh.... so that's Tex Connor.”
“Yes. And Jim Watson with him. He was cashiered from the army
in the Philippines. He is generally known now, along the coast, as
the Manila Kid.”
“So that's Tex Connor!.... He managed the North End Sporting in
London, three years ago.”
“Very likely. I believe he is known in London and Paris.”
“He's a professional gambler, then?”
“I am not undertaking to characterize him. But if you would accept
a word of advice—”
“I haven't asked for it, that I'm aware of.” An instant after he had
said this, the boy's face changed. He looked up at the immense
frame of the man before him, and into the grave face. The warm
color came into his own. “Oh, I'm sorry!” he cried. “I needn't have
said that.” But confusion still lay behind that immature face. The
very presence of this big man affected him to a degree wholly out of
keeping with the fellow's station in life, as he saw it. But he needn't
have been rude. “Look here, are you going to say anything to my
father?”
 “Certainly not.”
“Will the captain?”
“You will have to ask him yourself. Though you could hardly
expect to keep it from him long, at this rate.”
“Well—he's so busy! He shuts himself up all day with Braker, his
secretary. The chap with the big spectacles. You see”—Kane laughed
self-consciously; a naively boyish quality in him, kept him talking
more eagerly than he knew—“the pater's reached the stage when he
feels he ought to put himself right before the world. I guess he's
been a great old pirate, the pater—you know, wrecking railroads and
grabbing banks and going into combinations. Though it's just what
all the others have done. From what I've heard about some of them
—friends of ours, too!—you have to, nowadays, in business. No
place for little men or soft men. It's a two-fisted game. This fellow
spent a couple of years writing the pater's autobiography:—seems
funny, doesn't it!—and they're going over it together on this trip.
That's why Braker came along; there's no time at home. The original
plan was to have Braker tutor me. That was when I broke out of
college. But, lord!....”
“You'll excuse me now,” said the mate.
Meantime the Manila Kid had sidled up to the captain.
“Say, Cap,” he observed cautiously, “wha'd you come down on Tex
like that for?”
“Oh, come,” replied the captain testily, not turning, “don't bother
me!”
“But what you expect us to do all this time on the river—play
jackstraws?”
“I don't care what you do! Some trips they get up deck games.”
“Deck games!” The Kid sniffed.
“You'll find plenty to read in the library”
“Read!....”
“Then I guess you'll just have to stand it.”
 For some time they stood side by side without speaking; the
captain eying the river, the Kid moodily observing water buffalo
bathing near the bank.
“Tex has got that Chinese heavyweight of his aboard—down
below.”
“Oh—that Tom Sung?”
“Yep. Knocked out Bull Kennedy in three rounds at the Shanghai
Sporting. Got some matches for him up at Peking and Tientsin.
Taking him over to Japan after that. There's an American marine
that's cleaned up three ships'.” He was silent for a space; then
added: “I suppose, now, if we was to arrange a little boxing
entertainment, you wouldn't stand for that either, eh?”
“Oh, that's all right. Take the social hall if the ladies don't object.
But who would you put up against him?”
“Well—if we could find a young fellow on board, Tex could tell Tom
to go light.”
“You might ask Mr. Doane. He complains he ain't getting exercise
enough.”
“He's pretty old—still, I'd hate to go up against him myself.... Say,
you ask him, Cap!”
“I'll think it over. He's a little.... I'll tell you now he wouldn't stand
for your making a show of it. If he did it, it 'ud just be for exercise.”
“Oh, that's all right!”
Miss Means awoke with a start. It was the second morning out, at
sunrise. The engines were still, but from without an extraordinary
hubbub rent the air. Drums were beating, reed instruments wailing
in weird dissonance, and innumerable voices chattering and
shouting. A sudden crackling suggested fire-crackers in quantity.
Miss means raised herself on one elbow, and saw her roommate
peeping out over the blind.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It looks very much like the real China we've read about,” replied
Miss Andrews, raising her voice above the din. “It's certainly very
different from Shanghai.”
The steamer lay alongside a landing hulk at the foot of broad
steps. Warehouses crowded the bank and the bund above, some of
Western construction; but the crowded scene on hulk and steps and
bund, and among the matting-roofed sampans, hundreds of which
were crowded against the bank, was wholly Oriental. From every
convenient mast and pole pennants and banners spread their
dragons on the fresh early breeze. A temporary pen-low, or archway,
at the top of the steps was gay with fresh paint and streamers. In
the air above were scores of kites, designed and painted to
represent dragons and birds of prey, which the owners were
maneuvering in mimic aerial warfare; swooping and darting and
diving. As Miss Means looked, one huge painted bird fell in shreds to
a neighboring roof, and the swarming assemblage cheered
ecstatically.
Soldiers were marching in good-humored disorder down the bund,
in the inevitable faded blue with blue turbans wound about their
heads. It appeared as if not another person could force his way
down on the hulk without crowding at least one of its occupants into
the water, yet on they came; and so far as our two little ladies could
see none fell. Fully two hundred of the soldiers there were, with
short rifles and bayonets. Amid great confusion they formed a lane
down the steps and across to the gangway.
Next came a large, bright-colored sedan chair slung on cross-
poles, with eight bearers and with groups of silk-clad mandarins
walking before and behind. Farther back, swaying along, were eight
or ten more chairs, each with but four bearers and each tightly
closed, waiting in line as the chair of the great one was set carefully
down on the hulk and opened by the attending officials.
Deliberately, smilingly, the great one stepped out. He was a man
of seventy or older, with a drooping gray mustache and narrow chin
beard of gray that contrasted oddly with the black queue. His robe
was black with a square bit of embroidery in rich color on the breast.
Above his hat of office a huge round ruby stood high on a gold
mount, and a peacock feather slanted down behind it.
 Bowing to right and left, he ascended the gangplank, the
mandarins following. There were fifteen of these, each with a round
button on his plumed hat—those in the van of red coral, the others
of sapphire and lapis lazuli, rock crystal, white stone and gold.
One by one the lesser chairs were brought out on the hulk and
opened. From the first stepped a stout woman of mature years,
richly clad in heavily embroidered silks, with loops of pearls about
her neck and shoulders, and with painted face under the elaborately
built-up head-dress. Other women of various' ages followed, less
conspicuously clad. From the last chair appeared a young woman,
slim and graceful even in enveloping silks, her face, like the others, a
mask of white paint and rouge, with lips carmined into a perfect
cupid's bow. And with her, clutching her hand, was a little girl of six
or seven, who laughed merrily upward at the great steamer as she
trotted along.
Blue-clad servants followed, a hundred or more, and swarming
cackling women with unpainted faces and flapping black trousers,
and porters—long lines of porters—with boxes and bales and
bundles swung from the inevitable bamboo poles.
At last they were all aboard, and the steamer moved out.
“Who were all those women, in the chairs, do you suppose?”
asked Miss Andrews.
“His wives, probably.”
“Oh....!”
“Or concubines.”
Miss Andrews was silent. She could still see the waving crowd on
the wharf, and the banners and kites.
“He must be at least a prince, with all that retinue.”
Miss Andrews, thinking rapidly of Aladdin and Marco Polo, of wives
and concubines and strange barbarous ways, brought herself to say
in a nearly matter-of-fact voice: “But those women all had natural
feet. I don't understand.”
Miss Means reached for her Things Chinese; looked up “Feet,”
 “Women,”
“Dress,” and other headings; finally found an answer, through a
happy inspiration, under “Manchus.”
“That's it!” she explained; and read: “'The Manchus do not bind
the feet of their women.'”
“Well!” Thus Miss Andrews, after a long moment with more than a
hint of emotional stir in her usually quiet voice: “We certainly have a
remarkable assortment of fellow passengers. That curious silent girl
in the middy blouse.... traveling alone...”
“Remarkable, and not altogether edifying,” observed the practical
Miss Means.
 CHAPTER II—BETWEEN THE
WORLDS

T
OWARD noon Miss Means and Miss Andrews were in their
chairs on deck, when a gay little outburst of laughter caught
their attention, and around the canvas screen came running
the child they had seen on the wharf at Nanking. A sober Chinese
servant (Miss Means and Miss Andrews were not to know that he
was a eunuch) followed at a more dignified pace.
The child was dressed in a quilted robe of bright flowered silk, the
skirt flaring like a bed about the ankles, the sleeves extending down
over the hands. Her shoes were high, of black cloth with paper
soles. Over the robe she wore a golden yellow vest, shortsleeved,
trimmed with ribbon and fastened with gilt buttons. Over her head
and shoulders was a hood of fox skin worn with the fur inside, tied
with ribbons under the chin, and decorated, on the top of the head,
with the eyes, nose and ears of a fox. As she scampered along the
deck she lowered her head and charged at the big first mate. He
smiled, caught her shoulders, spun her about, and set her free
again; then, nodding pleasantly to the eunuch, he passed on.
Before the two ladies he paused to say: “We are coming into
T'aiping, the city that gave a name to China's most terrible rebellion.
If you care to step around to the other side, you'll see something of
the quaint life along the river.”
“He seems very nice—the mate,” remarked Miss Andrews. “I find
myself wondering who he may have been. He is certainly a
gentleman.”
“I understand,” replied Miss Means coolly, “that one doesn't ask
that question on the China Coast.” They found the old river port drab
and dilapidated, yet rich in the color of teeming human life. The
river, as usual, was crowded with small craft. Nearly a score of these
were awaiting the steamer, each evidently housing an entire family
under its little arch of matting, and each extending bamboo poles
with baskets at the ends. As the steamer came to a stop, a long row
of these baskets appeared at the rail, while cries and songs arose
from the water.
The little Manchu girl had found a friend in Mr. Rocky Kane. He
was holding her on the rail and supplying her with brass cash which
she dropped gaily into the baskets. The eunuch stood smiling by.
After tiffin the child appeared again and sought her new friend. She
would sit on his knee and pry open his mouth to see where the
strange sounds came from. And his cigarettes delighted her.
It was the Manila Kid himself who asked Miss Means and Miss
Andrews if they would mind a bit of a boxing: match in the social
hall. They promptly withdrew to their cabin, after Miss Means had
uttered a bewildered but dignified: “Not in the least! Don't think of
us!”
Shortly after dinner the cabin stewards stretched a rope around
four pillars, just forward of the dining table. The men lighted
cigarettes and cigars, and moved up with quickening interest. Tex
Connor, who had disappeared directly after the coffee, brought in his
budding champion, a large grinning yellow man in a bathrobe. The
second mate, and two of the engineers found seats about the
improvised rings. Then an outer door opened, and the great
mandarin appeared, bowing and smiling courteously with hands
clasped before his breast. The fifteen lesser mandarins followed, all
rich color and rustling silk.
The young officers sprang to their feel and arranged chairs for the
party. The great man seated himself, and his attendants grouped
themselves behind him.
Into this expectant atmosphere came the mate, in knickerbockers
and a sweater, stooping under the lintel of the door, then
straightening up and stopping short. His eyes quickly took in the
crowded little picture—the gray-bearded mandarin in the ringside
chair, backed with a mass of Oriental color; that other personage,
Dawley Kane, directly opposite, with the aquiline nose, the guardedly
keen eyes and the quite humorless face, as truly a mandarin among
the whites as was calm old Kang among the yellows; the flushed
eager face of Rocky Kane; the other whites, all smoking, all watching
him sharply, all impatient for the show. He frowned; then, as the
mandarin smiled, came gravely forward, bent under the rope and
addressed him briefly in Chinese.
The mandarin, frankly pleased at hearing his own tongue, rose to
reply. Each clasped his own hands and bowed low, with the
observance of a long-hardened etiquette so dear to the Oriental
heart.
“How about a little bet?” whispered Rocky Kane to Tex Connor. “I
wouldn't mind taking the big fellow.”
“What odds'll you give?” replied the impassive one.
“Odds nothing! Your man's a trained fighter, and he must be
twenty years younger.”
“But this man Doane's an old athlete. He's boxed, off and on, all
his life. And he's kept in condition. Look at his weight, and his
reach.”
“What's the distance?”
“Oh—six two-minute rounds.”
“Who'll referee?”
“Well—one of the Englishmen.”
But the Englishmen were not at hand. A friendly bout between
yellow and white overstepped their code. One of the customs men,
an Australian, accepted the responsibility, however.
“I'll lay you a thousand, even,” said Rocky Kane.
“Make it two thousand.”
“I'll give you two thousand, even,” said Dawley Kane quietly.
“Taken! Three thousand, altogether—gold.”
The mate, turning away from the mandarin, caught this; stood
motionless looking at them, his brows drawing together.
 “Gentlemen,” he finally remarked, “I came here with the
understanding that it was to be only a little private exercise. I had
no objection, of course, to your looking on, some of you, but this....”
“Oh, come!” said Connor. “It's just for points. Tom's not going to
fight you.”
Young Kane, gripping the rope nervously with both hands, cried:
“You wouldn't quit!”
The mate looked down at these men. “No,” he replied, in the same
gravely quiet manner, “I shall go on with it. I do this”—he made the
point firmly, with a dignity that in some degree, for the moment,
overawed the younger men—“I do it because his excellency has paid
us the honor of coming here in this democratic way. He tells me that
he is fond of boxing. I shall try to entertain him.” And he drew the
sweater over his head, and caught the gloves that the Kid tossed
him.
The elder Kane shrewdly took him in. The authority of the man
was not to be questioned. Without so much as raising his voice he
had dominated the strange little gathering. Physically he was a
delight to the eye; anywhere In the forties, his hair thin to the verge
of baldness, his strong sober face deeply lined, yet with shoulders,
arms and chest that spoke of great muscular power and a waist
without a trace of the added girth that middle age usually brings; of
sound English stock, doubtless; the sort that in the older land would
ride to hounds at eighty.
Dawley Kane looked, then, at the Chinese heavyweight. This man,
though not quite a match in size for the giant before him, appeared
every inch the athlete. Kane understood the East too well to find him
at all surprising; he had seen the strapping northern men of Yuan
Shi K'ai's new army; he knew that the trained runners of the
Imperial Government were expected, on occasion, to cover their
hundred miles in a day; in a word, that the curious common
American notion of the Chinese physique was based on an
occasional glimpse of a tropical laundryman. And he settled back in
his comfortable chair confident of a run for his money. The occasion
promised, indeed, excellent entertainment.
The mate, still with that slight frown, glanced about. Not one of
the crowded eager faces about the ropes exhibited the slightest
interest in himself as a human being. He was but the mate of a river
steamer; a man who had not kept up with his generation (the
reason didn't matter)—an individual of no standing.... He put up his
hands.
Tom Sung fell into a crouch. With his left shoulder advanced, his
chin tucked away behind it, he moved in close and darted quick but
hard blows to the stomach and heart. Duane stepped backward, and
edged around him, feeling him out, studying his hands and arms, his
balance, his footwork. It early became clear that he was a
thoroughgoing professional, who meant to go in and make a fight of
it.... Doane, sparring lightly, considered this. Conner, of course, had
no sportsmanship.
Tom's left hand shot up through Doane's guard, landing clean on
his face with a sharp thud; followed up with a remarkably quick right
swing that the mate, by sidestepping, succeeded only in turning into
a glancing blow. And then, as Doane ducked a left thrust, he
uppercut with all his strength. The blow landed on Doane's forearms
with a force that shook him from head to foot.
A sound of breath sharply indrawn came from the spectators, to
most of whom it must have appeared that the blow had gone home.
Doane, slipping away and mopping the sweat from eyes and
forehead, heard the sound; and for an instant saw them, all leaning
forward, tense, eager for a knockout, the one possible final thrill.
The yellow man was at him again, landing left, right and left on
his stomach, and butting a shaven head with real force against his
chin. For an instant stars danced about his eyes. Elbows had
followed the head, roughing at his face. Doane, quickly recovering,
leaped back and dropped his hands.
“What is this?” he called sharply to Connor, whose round
expressionless face with its one cool light eye and thin little mouth
looked at him without response. “Head? Elbows? Is your man going
to box, or not?”
The eyes that turned in surprise about the ringside were not
friendly. These men cared nothing for his little difficulties; their blood
was up. They wanted what the Americans among them would term
“action” and “results.”
Tom was tearing at him again. So it was, after all, to be a fight. No
preliminary understandings mattered. He felt a profound disgust, as
by main strength he stopped rush after rush, making full use of his
greater reach to pin Tom's arms and hurl him back; a disgust
however, that was changing gradually to anger. He had known, all
his life, the peculiar joy that comes to a man of great strength and
activity in any thorough test of his power.
The customs man called time.
Rocky Kane—flushed, excited, looking like a boy—felt in his
pockets for cigarettes; found none; and slipped hurriedly out to the
deck.
There a silken rustle stopped him short.
A slim figure, enveloped in an embroidered gown, was moving
back from a cabin window. The light from within fell—during a brief
second—full on an oval face that was brightly painted, red and
white, beneath glossy black hair. The nose was straight, and not
wide. The eyes, slanted only a little, looked brightly out from under
penciled brows. She was moving swiftly toward the canvas screen;
but he, more swiftly, leaped before her, stared at her; laughed softly
in sheer delighted surprise. Then, with a quick glance about the
deck, breathing out he knew not what terms of crude compliment he
reached for her; pursued her to the rail; caught her.
“You little beauty!” he was whispering now. “You wonder! You
darling! You're just too good to be true!” Beside himself, laughing
again, he bent over to kiss her. But she wrenched an arm free,
fought him off, and leaned, breathless, against the rail.
“Little yellow tiger, eh?” he cried softly. “Well, I'm a big white
tiger!”
 She said in English: “This is amazing!”
He stood frozen until she had disappeared behind the canvas
screen. Then he staggered back; stumbled against a deck chair;
turning, found the strange thin girl of the middy blouse stretched out
there comfortably in her rug.
She said, with a cool ease: “It's so pleasant out here this evening,
I really haven't felt like going in.”
With a muttered something—he knew not what—he rushed off to
his cabin; then rushed back into the social hall.
The customs man called time for the second round.
As Doane advanced to the center of the ring, Tom rushed, as
before, head down. Doane uppercut him; then threw him back,
forestalling a clinch. The next two or three rushes he met in the
same determined but negative way; hitting a few blows but for the
most part pushing him off. The sweat kept running into his eyes as
he exerted nearly his full strength. And Tom Sung's shoulders and
arms glistened a bright yellow under the electric lights.
Rocky Kane, lighting a cigarette and tossing the blazing match
away, called loudly: “Oh, hit him! For God's sake, do something!
Don't be afraid of a Chink!”
Doane glanced over at him. Tom rushed. Doane felt again the
crash of solid body blows delivered with all the force of more than
two hundred pounds of well-trained muscle behind them. Again he
winced and retreated. He knew well that he could endure only a
certain amount of this punishment.... Suddenly Tom struck with the
sharpest impact yet. Again that hard head butted his chin; an elbow
and the heel of a glove roughed his face.... Doane summoned all his
strength to push him off. Then he stepped deliberately forward.
At last the primitive vigor in this giant was aroused. His eyes
blazed. There was no manner of pleasure in hurting a fellow man of
any color; but since the particular man was asking for it, insisting on
it, there was no longer a choice. The fellow had clearly been trained
to this foul sort of work. That would be Connor's way, to take every
advantage, place a large side bet and then make certain of winning.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com