breeze. She was singing to a kind of guitar, an amazing melody, uncouth in its way, and unintelligible. Yet the young man turned over and smiled as he listened.
“Is there no other thing but money to be desired amongst you of the West,” Wu Ling asked, “that even in youth you risk so much?”
Gregory Ballaston clasped his hands behind his head. He was gazing steadily up at the stars, listening to the melody dying away in the distance. Although he addressed his companion, he had the air of one soliloquising.
“The further West you go, Wu Ling,” he said, “the more you need money to taste life. Artistically, of course, it’s all wrong, but then the world’s all wrong. It’s slipped out of shape somehow, during the last thousand years. We aren’t natural any longer. The natural person accepts pleasure, but doesn’t seek it. Directly you seek, you begin a terrible chase, and we’re all seekers over westward, Wu Ling. We have lost the art of being. We have lost the gift of repose. We have lost the capacity for quiet enjoyments. Sport, ambitions and love-making have all joined in the débâcle. No one man can live alone and away from his fellows, even if he sees into the evil of these things. All life to us has come to run on wheels which need always the oil of money.”
“And for the chance of gaining that,” Wu Ling murmured, “you young Englishmen have come so far and risked your lives.”
The young man looked round the cabin and beyond. There was a rack of rifles against the wall, boxes of ammunition which reached to the ceiling. The moonlight outside glinted now and then upon the muzzles of the Maxims.
“You yourself, Wu Ling,” he pointed out, “run risks. For what? For the same thing. For wealth. You wouldn’t carry those firearms unless you had trouble sometimes. You are past the time of life when an adventure alone appeals. You too seek wealth, and you seek it with Maxim guns and Enfield rifles to protect yourself.”
“There are evil men upon the river,” Wu Ling admitted. “There are men like Abst and others, but these are for protection. We have a proverb in this country—‘The strong man only is safe.’”
“A wise saying,” the young man acknowledged drowsily.
Wu Ling rose to his feet.
“Our guest must sleep,” he said. “Soon the night will be cold and they will draw coverings over the netting.”
“I’m awfully afraid I’m turning you out of your quarters,” Gregory Ballaston apologised.
“I have others,” was the courteous reply. “It is for sleep I leave you.”
He passed out and, walking to the stern of the boat, stood pensively watching a little streak of silver left behind. Forward the young man slept—slept as he had never hoped to do again in this world. All through the night they made lazy progress towards the great city which fringed the ocean.
CHAPTER II
Wu Ling, the trader, Chinese representative of the great house of Johnson and Company, at home and amongst his merchandise, was strangely installed. He sat in the remote corner of a huge warehouse, packed from floor to ceiling with an amazingly heterogeneous collection of all manner of articles. There were bales of cotton and calico goods from Manchester, woollens from Bradford, cases of firearms from Birmingham, and six great crates of American bicycles in the foreground. A Ford automobile stood in the middle of the floor, and, farther back, in the recesses of the room, which seemed to be of no particular shape, and which wandered into many corners, were piles of Chinese silks, shelf after shelf of china bowls and ivory statuettes. Hanging from the walls were mandarins’ robes of green and blue, embroidered with many-coloured silks, fragments of brocade, and one great pictorial representation of the grounds of an emperor’s palace, woven with miraculous skill into a background of pale blue material. From the more distant parts of the warehouse came an insidious, pungent odour, as of a perfume from which the life had gone but the faintness of which remained; a perfume which spread itself with gentle insistence into every corner of the place and seemed to envelop even its more sordid details with an air of mystery. In the great open yard, blue-smocked Chinamen were packing and unpacking in amazing silence. The only sound in the warehouse itself came from the clicking of a typewriter before which, on a plain deal bench, was seated a black-haired, sallow-faced youth in European clothes. From outside, there drifted in through the open window, in a confused medley, the strange noises of the quay, the patter of naked feet, the shrill cry of the porters and occasional screech of a siren. A white mist hung over the harbour; a hot, damp mist, concealing in patches the tangled mass of shipping....
Into this curious chamber of commerce, ushered by a Chinese boy, came Gregory Ballaston, the Englishman whom Wu Ling had rescued a short while ago. The Chinese boy murmured something and departed. Wu Ling nodded a welcome to his visitor—a grave, reserved welcome.
“No gone England yet,” he observed.
The young man sank into the chair which the other’s gesture indicated. He had evidently found his clothes, for he was very correctly dressed in the European fashion. His manner was self-possessed and his voice level. Nevertheless his pallor was almost ghastly and there were still blue lines under his eyes. He had the air of a man who has been through some form of suffering.
“You have heard the story of my friend, Wu Ling?” he asked.
The Chinaman shook his head and pointed around.
“Much affairs,” he explained. “Very busy. Smoke cigarette?”
Gregory Ballaston helped himself from the open box.
“My friend got away,” he recounted; “reached Pekin and got safely on to the train. At some God-forsaken place on the way here, the train was held up. There seems to have been confusion for an hour or so. When the soldiers arrived, my friend was found with his throat cut, and the Chinaman who had been his guide and interpreter was killed too.”
Wu Ling inclined his head gravely. The story was not an unusual one.
“Robbers in China are bad men,” he declared. “And the Images?”
The young Englishman touched his forehead. The heat was great and there were drops of moisture upon his fingers.
“One was still amongst the train baggage,” he confided. “It is now safely on board the steamer. The other was taken away by the robbers.”
Wu Ling reflected for several moments, looking downward upon the table. He seemed indisposed for speech, and presently his visitor continued.
“Of course,” he went on, “according to the superstition, one is supposed to be worthless without the other. I am going to risk that, however. Mine is under lock and key in the purser’s safe, and I sha’n’t even look at it until we’re well out of these seas.”
“The steamer sail at four o’clock to-morrow,” Wu Ling remarked, glancing at a chart.
The young man nodded.
“I have been on board already,” he said. “I came back to pay my promised call upon you and to thank you once more for all you did for me.”
Wu Ling waved his hand.
“It was nothing,”
