revelation, the doctor puttered about among the bottles on the
stand.

"We're forgetting," he said. "We mustn't disturb the patient. I'll
call for you after lunch."

"I'm sorry."

She began to prepare the room for Wu's coming, while the doctor
went downstairs. As he was leaving the hotel, Ah Cum stepped up to
his side.

"How is Mr. Taber?"

"Regained consciousness this morning."

Ah Cum nodded. "That is good."

"You are interested?"

"In a way, naturally. We are both graduates of Yale."

"Ah! Did he tell you anything about himself?"

"Aside from that, no. When will he be up?"

"That depends. Perhaps in two or three weeks. Did he talk a little
when you took him into the city?"

"No. He appeared to be strangely uncommunicative, though I tried to
draw him out. He spoke only when he saw the sing-song girl he
wanted to buy."

"Why didn't you head him off, explain that it couldn't be done by a
white man?"

Ah Cum shrugged. "You are a physician; you know the vagaries of men
in liquor. He was a stranger. I did not know how he would act if I
obstructed him."

"We found all his pockets empty."

"Then they were empty when he left," replied Ah Cum, with dignity.

"I was only commenting. Did he act to you that day as if he knew
what he was doing?"

"Not all of the time."

"A queer case;" and the doctor passed on.

Ah Cum made a movement as though to follow, but reconsidered. The
word of a Chinaman; he had given it, so he must abide. There was
now no honest way of warning Taber that the net had been drawn. Of
course, it was ridiculous, this inclination to assist the fugitive,
based as it was upon an intangible university idea. And yet,
mulling it over, he began to understand why the white man was so
powerful in the world: he was taught loyalty and fair play in his
schools, and he carried this spirit the world which his forebears
had conquered.

Suddenly Ah Cum laughed aloud. He, a Chinaman, troubling himself
over Occidental ideas! With his hands in his sleeves, he proceeded
on his way.

Ruth and the doctor returned to the hotel at four. Both carried
packages of books and magazines. There was an air of repressed
gaiety in her actions: the sense of freedom had returned; her heart
was empty again. The burden of decision had been transferred.

And because he knew it was a burden, there was no gaiety upon the
doctor's face; neither was there speech on his tongue. He knew not
how to act, urged as he was in two directions. It would be useless
to tell her to go back, even heartless; and yet he could not advise
her to go on, blindly, not knowing whether her aunt was dead or
alive. He was also aware that all his arguments would shatter
themselves against her resolutions. There was a strange quality of
steel in this pretty creature. He understood now that it was a part
of her inheritance. The father would be all steel. One point in her
narrative stood out beyond all others. To an unthinking mind the
episode would be ordinary, trivial; but to the doctor, who had had
plenty of time to think during his sojourn in China, it was basic
of the child's unhappiness. A dozen words, and he saw Enschede as
clearly as though he stood hard by in the flesh.

To preach a fine sermon every Sunday so that he would lose neither
the art nor the impulse; and this child, in secret rebellion,
taking it down in long hand during odd hours in the week! Preaching
grandiloquently before a few score natives who understood little
beyond the gestures, for the single purpose of warding off
disintegration! It reminded the doctor of a stubborn retreat; from
barricade to barricade, grimly fighting to keep the enemy at bay,
that insidious enemy of the white man in the South Seas--inertia.

The drunken beachcombers; the one-sided education; the utter
loneliness of a white child without playfellows, human or animal,
without fairy stories, who for days was left alone while the father
visited neighbouring islands, these pictures sank far below their
actual importance. He would always see the picture of the huge,
raw-boned Dutchman, haranguing and thundering the word of God into
the dull ears of South Sea Islanders, who, an hour later, would be
carrying fruit penitently to their wooden images.

He now understood her interest in Taber, as he called himself:
habit, a twice-told tale. A beachcomber in embryo, and she had lent
a hand through habit as much as through pity. The grim mockery of
it!--those South Sea loafers, taking advantage of Enschede's
Christianity and imposing upon him, accepting his money and
medicines and laughing behind his back! No doubt they made the name
a byword and a subject for ribald jest in the waterfront bars. And
this clear-visioned child had comprehended that only half the
rogues were really ill. But Enschede took them as they came,
without question. Charity for the ragtag and the bobtail of the
Seven Seas, and none for his own flesh and blood.

This started a thought moving. There must be something behind the
missioner's actions, something of which the girl knew nothing nor
suspected. It would not be possible otherwise to live in daily
contact with this level-eyed, lovely girl without loving her.
Something with iron resolve the father had kept hidden all these
years in the lonely citadel of his heart. Teaching the word of God
to the recent cannibal, caring for the sick, storming the
strongholds of the plague, adding his own private income to the
pittance allowed him by the Society, and never seeing the angel
that walked at his side! Something the girl knew nothing about;
else Enschede was unbelievable.

It now came to him with an added thrill how well she had told her
story; simply and directly, no skipping, no wandering hither and
yon: from the first hour she could remember, to the night she had
fled in the proa, a clear sustained narrative. And through it all,
like a golden thread on a piece of tapestry, weaving in and out of
the patterns, the unspoken longing for love.

"Well," she said, as they reached the hotel portal, "what is your
advice?"

"Would you follow it?"

"Probably not. Still, I am curious."

"I do not say that what you have done is wrong in any sense. I do
not blame you for the act. There are human limitations, and no
doubt you reached yours. For all that, it is folly. If you knew
your aunt were alive, if she expected you, that would be different.
But to plunge blindly into the unknown!"

"I had to! I had to!"

She had told him only the first part of her story. She wondered if
the second part would overcome his objections? Several times the
words had rushed to her tongue, to find her tongue paralysed. To a
woman she might have confided; but to this man, kindly as he was,
it was unthinkable. How could she tell him of the evil that drew
her and drew her, as a needle to the magnet?--the fascinating evil
that even now, escaped as it was, went on distilling its poison in
her mind?

"Yes, yes!" said the doctor. "But if you do not find this aunt,
what will you do? What can you do to protect yourself against
hunger?"

"I'll find something."

"But warn the aunt, prepare her, if she lives."

"And have her warn my father! No. If I surprised her, if I saw her
alone, I might make her understand."

He shook his head. "There's only one way out of the muddle, that I
can see."

"And what is that?"

"I have relatives not far from Hartford. I may prevail upon them to
take you in until you are full-fledged, providing you do not find
this aunt. You say you have twenty-four hundred in your letter of
credit. It will not cost you more than six hundred to reach your
destination. The pearls were really yours?"

"They were left to me by my mother. I sometimes laid away my
father's clothes in his trunk. I saw the metal box a hundred times,
but I never thought of opening it until the day I fled. I never
even burrowed down into the trunk. I had no curiosity of that kind.
I wanted something _alive_." She paused.

"Go on."

"Well, suddenly I knew that I must see the inside of that box,
which had a padlock. I wrenched this off, and in an envelope
addressed to me in faded ink, I found the locket and the pearls. It
is queer how ideas pop into one's head. Instantly I knew that I was
going to run away that night before he returned from the
neighbouring island. At the bottom of the trunk I found two of my
mother's dresses. I packed them with the other few things I owned.
Morgan the trader did not haggle over the pearls, but gave me at
once what he judged a fair price. You will wonder why he did not
hold the pearls until Father returned. I didn't understand then,
but I do now. It was partly to pay a grudge he had against father."

"And partly what else?"

"I shall never tell anybody that."

"I don't know," said the doctor, dubiously. "You're only twenty--not
legally of age."

"I am here in Canton," she replied, simply.

"Very well. I'll cable to-night, and in a few days we'll have some
news. I'm a graybeard, an old bachelor; so I am accorded certain
privileges. Sometimes I am frightfully busy; and then there will be
periods of dullness. I have a few regular patients, and I take care
of them in the morning. Every afternoon, from now on, I will teach
you a little about life--I mean the worldly points of view you're
likely to meet. You are queerly educated; and it strikes me that
your father had some definite purpose in thus educating you. I'll
try to fill in the gaps."

The girl's eyes filled. "I wonder if you will understand what this
kindness means to me? I am so terribly wise--and so wofully
ignorant!"

CHAPTER XII

The doctor shifted his books and magazines to the crook of his
elbow. He had done this a dozen times on the way from his office.
Books were always sliding and slipping, clumsy objects to hold.
Looking at this girl, a sense of failure swept over him. He had not
been successful as the world counted success; the fat bank-account,
the filled waiting room of which he had once dreamed, had never
materialized except in the smoke of his evening pipe.

And yet he knew that his skill was equal to that of any fashionable
practitioner in Hong-Kong. He wasn't quite hard enough to win
worldly success; that was his fault. Anybody in pain had only to
call to him. So, here he was, on the last lap of middle age, in
China, having missed all the thrills in life except one--the war
against Death. It rather astonished him. He hadn't followed this
angle of thought in ten years: what he might have been, with a
little shrewd selfishness. This extraordinary child had opened up
an old channel through which it was no longer safe to cruise. She
was like an angel with one wing. The simile started a laugh in his
throat.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked gravely.

"At a thought. Of you--an angel with one wing."

"Meaning that I don't belong anywhere, in heaven or on earth?"

"Meaning that you must cut off the wing or grow another to mate it.
Let's go up and see how the patient is doing. Wu may have news for
us. We'll get those books into your room first. And I'll have
supper with you."

"If only...." But she did not complete the thought aloud. If only
this man had been her father! The world would have meant nothing;
the island would have been wide enough.

"You were saying--?"

"I started to say something; that is all."

"By the way, did you read those stories?"

"Yes."

"Worth anything?"

"I don't know."

"Silly love stories?"

"No; love wasn't the theme. Supposing you take them and read them?
You might be able to tell me why I felt disappointed."

"All right. I'll take them back with me. Probably he has something
to say and can't say it, or he writes well about nothing."

"Do you believe his failure caused...."

"What?" he barked. But he did not follow on with the thought. There
was no need of sowing suspicion when he wasn't really certain there
were grounds for it. "Well, you never can tell," he continued,
lamely. "These writer chaps are queer birds."

"Queer birds."

He laughed and followed her into the hotel. "More slang," he said.
"I'll have to set you right on that, too."

"I have heard sailors use words like that, but I never knew what
they meant."

Sailors, he thought; and most of them the dregs of the South Seas,
casting their evil glances at this exquisite creature and trying to
smirch with innuendo the crystal clearness of her mind. Perhaps
there were experiences she would never confide to any man. Sudden
indignation boiled up in him. The father was a madman. It did not
matter that he wore the cloth; something was wrong with him. He
hadn't played fair.

"Remember; we must keep the young fellow's thoughts away from
himself. Tell him about the island, the coconut dance, the wooden
tom-toms; read to him."

"What made him buy that sing-song girl?" Regarding this, Ruth had
ideas of her own, but she wanted the doctor's point of view.

"Maybe he realized that he was slipping fast and thought a fine
action might give him a hand-hold on life again. You tell me he
didn't like the stuff."

"He shuddered when he drank."

"Well, that's a hopeful sign. I'll test him out later; see if there
is any craving. Give me the books. I'll put them in your room; then
we'll have a look-see."

The patient was asleep. According to Wu, the young man had not
opened his eyes once during the afternoon.

So Ruth returned to her room and sorted the books and magazines the
doctor had loaned her, inspected the titles and searched for
pictures. And thus it was that she came upon a book of Stevenson's
verse--her first adventure into poetry. The hymnal lyrics had never
stirred her; she had memorized and sung them parrot-wise. But here
was new music, tender and kindly and whimsical, that first roved to
and fro in the mind and then cuddled up in the heart. Anything that
had love in it!

The doctor comprehended that he also had his work cut out. While
the girl kept the patient from dwelling upon his misfortunes,
whatever these were, he himself would have to keep the girl from
brooding over hers. So he made merry at the dinner table, told
comic stories, and was astonished at the readiness with which she
grasped the comic side of life. His curiosity put itself into a
question.

"Old Morgan the trader," she explained, "used to save me _Tit-Bits_.
He would read the jokes and illustrate them; and after a
time I could see the point of a joke without having it explained to
me. I believe it amused him. I was a novelty. He was always in a
state of semi-intoxication, but he was always gentle with me.
Probably he taught me what a joke was merely to irritate my father;
for suddenly Father stopped my going to the store for things and
sent our old Kanaka cook instead. She had been to San Francisco,
and what I learned about the world was from her. Thank you for the
books."

"You were born on the island?"

"I believe so."

"You don't remember your mother?"

"Oh, no; she died when I was very little."

She showed him the locket; and he studied the face. It was equally
as beautiful but not quite so fine as the daughter's. He returned
the locket without comment.

"Perhaps things would have been different if she had lived."

"No doubt," he replied. "Mine died while I was over here. Perhaps
that is why I lost my ambition."

"I am sorry."

"It is life."

There was a pause. "He never let me keep a dog or a cat about the
house. But after a time I learned the ways of the parrakeets, and
they would come down to me like doves in the stories. I never made
any effort to touch them; so by and by they learned to light
fearlessly on my arms and shoulders. And what a noise they made!
This is how I used to call them."

She pursed her lips and uttered a whistle, piercingly shrill and
high; and instantly she became the object of intense astonishment
on the part of the other diners. She was quite oblivious to the
sensation she had created.

The picture of her flashed across the doctor's vision magically.
The emerald wings, slashed with scarlet and yellow, wheeling and
swooping about her head, there among the wild plantain.

"I never told anybody," she went on. "An audience might have
frightened the birds. Only in the sunshine; they would not answer
my whistle on cloudy days."

"Didn't the natives have a name for you?"

She blushed. "It was silly."

"Go on, tell me," he urged, enchanted. Never was there another girl
like this one. He blushed, too, spiritually, as it were. He had
invited himself to dine with her merely to watch her table manners.
They were exquisite. Knowing the South Seas from hearsay and by
travel, he knew something of that inertia which blunted the
fineness, innate and acquired, of white men and women, the eternal
warfare against indifference and slovenliness. Only the strong
survived. This queer father of hers had given her everything but
his arms. "Tell me, what did they call you?"

"Well, the old Kanaka cook used to call me the Golden One, but the
natives called me the Dawn Pearl."

"The Dawn Pearl! Odd, but we white folks aren't half so poetical as
the yellow or the black. What did you do when your father went on
trips to other islands?"

"Took off my shoes and stockings and played in the lagoon."

"He made you wear shoes and stockings?"

"Always."

"What else did you do when alone?"

"I read the encyclopaedia. That is how I learned that there were
such things as novels. Books! Aren't they wonderful?"

The blind alley of life stretching out before her, with its secret
doorways and hidden menaces; and she was unconcerned. Books; an
inexplicable hunger to be satisfied. Somewhere in the world there
was a book clerk with a discerning mind; for he had given her the
best he had. He envied her a little. To fall upon those tales for
the first time, when the mind was fresh and the heart was young!

He became aware of an odd phase to this conversation. The
continuity was frequently broken in upon by diversory suppositions.
Take the one that struck him at this moment. Supposing that was it;
at least, a solution to part of this amazing riddle? Supposing her
father had made her assist him in the care of the derelicts solely
to fill her with loathing and abhorrence for mankind?

"Didn't you despise the men your father brought home--the
beachcombers?"

"No. In the beginning was afraid; but after the first several
cases, I had only pity. I somehow understood."

"Didn't some of them ... try to touch you?"

"Not the true unfortunates. How men suffer for the foolish things
they do!"

"Ay to that. There's our young friend upstairs."

"There's a funny idea in my head. I've been thinking about it ever
since morning. There was a loose button on that coat, and I want to
sew it on. It keeps dangling in front of my eyes."

"Ah, yes; that coat. Probably a sick man's whim. Certainly, there
wasn't a thing in the pockets. But be very careful not to let him
know. If he awoke and caught you at it, there might be a set-back.
By the way, what did he say when he was out of his head?"

"The word 'Fool.' He muttered it continually. There was another
phrase which sounded something like 'Gin in a blue-serge coat'. I
wonder what he meant by that?"

"The Lord knows!"

The patient was restless during the first watch of the night. He
stirred continually, thrusting his legs about and flinging his arms
above his head. Gently each time Ruth drew down the arms. There was
a recurrence of fever, but nothing alarming. Once she heard him
mutter, and she leaned down.

"Ali Baba, in a blue-serge coat!... God-forsaken fool!"

CHAPTER XIII

One day Ruth caught the patient's eyes following her about; but
there was no question in the gaze, no interest; so she pretended
not to notice.

"Where am I?" asked Spurlock.

"In Canton."

"How long have I been in bed?"

"A week."

"My coat, please."

"It is folded under your pillow."

"Did I ask for it?"

"Yes. But perhaps you don't know; there was nothing in the pockets.
You were probably robbed in Hong-Kong."

"Nothing in the pockets."

"You see, we didn't know but you might die; and so we had to search
your belongings for the address of your people."

"I have no people--anybody who would care."

She kindled with sympathy. He was all alone, too. Nobody who cared.

Ruth was inflammable; she would always be flaring up swiftly, in
pity, in tenderness, in anger; she would always be answering
impulses, without seeking to weigh or to analyse them. She was
emerging from the primordial as Spurlock was declining toward it.
She was on the rim of civilization, entering, as Spurlock was on
the rim, preparing to make his exit. Two souls in travail; one
inspired by fresh hopes, the other, by fresh despairs. Both of them
would be committing novel and unforgettable acts.

"How long shall I be here?" he asked.

"That depends upon you. Not very long, if you want to get well."

"Are you a nurse?"

"Yes. Don't ask any more questions. Wait a little; rest."

There was a pause. Ruth flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he
took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the
sunshine touched her hair.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"The first day you came. Don't you remember? There were four of us,
and we went touring in the city."

"As in a dream." There was another pause. "Was I out of my head?"

"Yes."

"What did I say?"

"Only one word," she said, offering her first white lie.

"What was it?" He was insistent.

"You repeated the word '_Fool_' over and over."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Now, no more questions, or I shall be forced to leave the
room."

"I promise to ask no more."

"Would you like to have me read to you?"

He did not answer. So she took up Stevenson and began to read
aloud. She read beautifully because the fixed form of the poem
signified nothing. She went from period to period exactly as she
would have read prose; so that sense and music were equally
balanced. She read for half an hour, then closed the book because
Spurlock appeared to have fallen asleep. But he was wide awake.

"What poet was that?"

"Stevenson." Ruth had read from page to page in "The Child's Garden
of Verse," generally unfamiliar to the admirers of Stevenson. Of
course Ruth was not aware that in this same volume there were
lyrics known the world over.

Immediately Spurlock began to chant one of these.

  "'Under the wide and starry sky,
  Dig the grave and let me lie.
  Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will.'"

  "'This be the verse you grave for me:
  Here he lies where he longed to be;
  Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
    And the hunter home from the hill.'"

"What is that?" she asked. Something in his tone pinched her heart.
"Did you write it?"

"No. You will find it somewhere in that book. Ah, if I had written
that!"

"Don't you want to live?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"But you are young!" It was a protest, almost vehement. She
remembered the doctor's warning that the real battle would begin
when the patient recovered consciousness. "You have all the world
before you."

"Rather behind me;" and he spoke no more that morning.

Throughout the afternoon, while the doctor was giving her the first
lesson out of his profound knowledge of life, her interest would
break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down
to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she
heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like
the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her
father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those
who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I really don't know."

Her ear caught much of the lesson, and many things she stored away;
but often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face
never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not
recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put
the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no
sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the
doctor had already anticipated. Yet she held her tongue.

As for the doctor, he found a pleasure in this service that would
have puzzled him had he paused to analyse it. There was scant
social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings,
little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a
year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular
regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but
there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer
youngsters. Besides, by the time they were off his hands, old
McClintock would be dropping in to have his liver renovated.

All at once he recollected the fact that McClintock's copra
plantation was down that way, somewhere in the South Seas; had an
island of his own. Perhaps he had heard of this Enschede. Mac--the
old gossip--knew about everything going on in that part of the
world; and if Enschede was anything up to the picture the girl had
drawn, McClintock would have heard of him, naturally. He might
solve the riddle. All of which proves that the doctor also had his
moments of distraction, with this difference: he was not distracted
from his subject matter.

"So endeth the first lesson," he said. "Suppose we go and have tea?
I'd like to take you to a teahouse I know, but we'll go to the
Victoria instead. I must practise what I preach."

"I should be unafraid to go anywhere with you."

"Lord, that's just the lesson I've been expounding! It isn't a
question of fear; it's one of propriety."

"I'll never understand."

"You don't have to. I'll tell you what. I'll write out certain
rules of conduct, and then you'll never be in doubt."

She laughed; and it was pleasant laughter in his ears. If only this
child were his: what good times they would have together! The
thought passed on, but it left a little ache in his heart.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked.

"All that you have been telling me, our old Kanaka cook summed up
in a phrase."

"What was it?"

"Never glance sideways at a man.".

"The whole thing in a nutshell!"

"Are there no men a woman may trust absolutely?"

"Hang it, that isn't it. Of course there are, millions of them.
It's public opinion. We all have to kow-tow to that."

"Who made such a law?"

"This world is governed by minorities--in politics, in religion, in
society. Majorities, right or wrong, dare not revolt. Footprints,
and we have to toddle along in them, willy-nilly; and those who
have the courage to step outside the appointed path are called
pariahs!"

"I'm afraid I shall not like this world very much. It is putting
all my dreams out of joint."

"Never let the unknown edge in upon your courage. The world is like
a peppery horse. If he senses fear in the touch of your hand, he'll
give you trouble."

"It's all so big and aloof. It isn't friendly as I thought it would
be. I don't know; I really don't know," she found herself
repeating.

He drew her away from this thought. "I read those stories."

"Are they good?"

"He can write; but he hasn't found anything real to write about. He
hasn't found himself, as they say. He's rewriting Poe and De
Maupassant; and that stuff was good only when Poe and De Maupassant
wrote it."

"How do you spell the last name?"

He spelt it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a faint shudder
stir her shoulders. "Not the sort of stories young ladies should
read. Poe is all right, if you don't mind nightmares. But De
Maupassant--sheer off! Stick to Dickens and Thackeray and Hugo.
Before you go I'll give you a list of books to read."

"There are bad stories, then, just as there are bad people?"

"Yes. Sewn on that button yet?"

"I've been afraid to take the coat from under the pillow."

"Funny, about that coat. You told him there wasn't anything in the
pockets?"

"Yes."

"How did he take it?"

"He did not seem to care."

"There you are, just as I said. We've got to get him to care. We've
got to make him take up the harp of life and go twanging it again.
That's the job. He's young and sound. Of course, there'll be a few
kinks to straighten out. He's passed through some rough mental
torture. But one of these days everything will click back into
place. Great sport, eh? To haul them back from the ragged edge.
Wouldn't it be fun to see his name on a book-cover some day? He'll
go strutting up and down without ever dreaming he owed the whole
shot to us. That would be fun, eh?"

"I wonder if you know how kind you are? You are like somebody out
of a book."

"There, now! You mustn't get mixed. You mustn't go by what you read
so much as by what you see and hear. You must remember, you've just
begun to read; you haven't any comparisons. You mustn't go dressing
up Tom, Dick, and Harry in Henry Esmond's ruffles. What you want to
do is to imagine every woman a Becky Sharp and every man a Rawdon
Crawley."

"I know what is good," she replied.

"Yes; but what is good isn't always proper. And so, here we are,
right back from where we started. But no more of that. Let's talk
of this chap. There's good stuff in him, if one could find the way
to dig it out. But pathologically, he is still on the edge. Unless
we can get some optimism into him, he'll probably start this all
over again when he gets on his feet. That's the way it goes. But
between us, we'll have him writing books some day. That's one of
the troubles with young folks: they take themselves so seriously.
He probably imagines himself to be a thousand times worse off than
he actually is. Youth finds it pleasant sometimes to be melancholy.
Disappointed puppy-love, and all that."

"Puppy-love."

"A young fellow who thinks he's in love, when he has only been
reading too much."

"Do girls have puppy-love?"

"Land sakes, yes! On the average they are worse than the boys. A
boy can forget his amatory troubles playing baseball; but a girl
can't find any particular distraction in doing fancy work. Do you
know, I envy you. All the world before you, all the ologies. What
an adventure! Of course, you'll bark your shins here and there and
hit your funnybone; but the newness of everything will be something
of a compensation. All right. Let's get one idea into our heads. We
are going to have this chap writing books one of these days."

Ideas are never born; they are suggested; they are planted seeds.
Ruth did not reply, but stared past the doctor, her eyes misty. The
doctor had sown a seed, carelessly. All that he had sown that
afternoon with such infinite care was as nothing compared to this
seed, cast without forethought. Ruth's mind was fertile soil; for a
long time to come it would be something of a hothouse: green things
would spring up and blossom overnight. Already the seed of a tender
dream was stirring. The hour for which, presumably, she had been
created was drawing nigh. For in life there is but one hour: an
epic or an idyll: all other hours lead up to and down from it.

"By the way," said the doctor, as he sat down in the dining room of
the Victoria and ordered tea, "I've been thinking it over."

"What?"

"We'll put those stories back into the trunk and never speak of
them to him."

"But why not?"

The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had
suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been
other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her
what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it
occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a
better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical
reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the
nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not
possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her,
forthwith.

"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I
found this one."

He passed it over; and Ruth read:

    To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside
    forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects
    to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.

CHAPTER XIV

Ruth lost the point entirely. The doctor expected her to seize upon
the subtle inference that there was something furtive, even
criminal, in the manner the patient set this obligation upon
humanity at large, to look after him in the event of his death. The
idea of anything criminal never entered her thoughts. Any man might
have endeavoured to protect himself in this fashion, a man with no
one to care, with an unnameable terror at the thought (as if it
mattered!) of being buried in alien earth, far from the familiar
places he loved.

Close upon this came another thought. She had no place she loved.
In all this world there was no sacred ground that said to her:
Return! She was of all human beings the most lonely. Even now,
during the recurring doubts of the future, the thought of the
island was repellent. She hated it, she hated the mission-house;
she hated the sleek lagoon, the palms, the burning sky. But some
day she would find a place to love: there would be rosy apples on
the boughs, and there would be flurries of snow blowing into her
face. It was astonishing how often this picture returned: cold rosy
apples and flurries of snow.

"The poor young man!" she said.

The doctor sensed that his bolt had gone wrong, but he could not
tell how or why. He dared not go on. He was not sure that the boy
had put himself beyond the pale; merely, the boy's actions pointed
that way. If he laid his own suspicions boldly before the girl, and
in the end the boy came clean, he would always be haunted by the
witless cruelty of the act.

That night in his den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the
old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of
tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably
something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his tummy was
fifty-four years old.

He would certainly welcome McClintock's advent. Mac would have some
new yarns to spin and a fresh turn-over to his celebrated liver. He
was a comforting, humorous old ruffian; but there were few men in
the Orient more deeply read in psychology and physiognomy. It was,
in a way, something of a joke to the doctor: psychology and
physiognomy on an island which white folks did not visit more than
three or four times a year, only then when they had to. Why did the
beggar hang on down there, when he could have enjoyed all that
civilization had to offer? Yes, he would be mighty glad to see
McClintock; and the sooner he came the better.

Sometimes at sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down
the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says
nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel"
that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the
"feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness,
elusive; so he sent out a call to his friend, defensively.

At the end of each day Ah Cum would inquire as to the progress of
the patient, and invariably the answer was: "About the same." This
went on for ten days. Then Ah Cum was notified that the patient had
sat up in bed for quarter of an hour. Promptly Ah Cum wired the
information to O'Higgins in Hong-Kong. The detective reckoned that
his quarry would be up in ten days more.

To Ruth the thought of Hartford no longer projected upon her vision
a city of spires and houses and tree-lined streets. Her fanciful
imagination no longer drew pictures of the aunt in the doorway of a
wooden house, her arms extended in welcome. The doctor's lessons,
perhaps delivered with too much serious emphasis, had destroyed
that buoyant confidence in her ability to take care of herself.

Between Canton and Hartford two giants had risen, invisible but
menacing--Fear and Doubt. The unknown, previously so attractive,
now presented another face--blank. The doctor had not heard from
his people. She was reasonably certain why. They did not want her.

Thus, all her interest in life began to centre upon the patient,
who was apparently quite as anchorless as she was. Sometimes a
whole morning would pass without Spurlock uttering a word beyond
the request for a drink of water. Again, he would ask a few
questions, and Ruth would answer them. He would repeat them
innumerable times, and patiently Ruth would repeat her answers.

"What is your name?"

"Ruth."

"Ruth what?"

"Enschede; Ruth Enschede."

"En-shad-ay. You are French?"

"No. Dutch; Pennsylvania Dutch."

And then his interest would cease. Perhaps an hour later he would
begin again.

At other times he seemed to have regained the normal completely. He
would discuss something she had been reading, and he would give her
some unexpected angle, setting a fictional character before her
with astonishing clearness. Then suddenly the curtain would fall.

"What is your name?" To-day, however, he broke the monotony. "An
American. Enschede--that's a queer name."

"I'm a queer girl," she replied with a smile.

Perhaps this was the real turning point: the hour in which the
disordered mind began permanently to readjust itself.

"I've been wondering, until this morning, if you were real."

"I've been wondering, too."

"Are you a real nurse?"

"Yes."

"Professional?"

"Why do you wish to know?"

"Professional nurses wear a sort of uniform."

"While I look as if I had stepped out of the family album?"

He frowned perplexedly. "Where did I hear that before?"

"Perhaps that first day, in the water-clock tower."

"I imagine I've been in a kind of trance."

"And now you are back in the world again, with things to do and
places to go. There is a button loose on that coat under your
pillow. Shall I sew it on for you?"

"If you wish."

This readiness to surrender the coat to her surprised Ruth. She had
prepared herself to meet violent protest, a recurrence of that
burning glance. But in a moment she believed she understood. He was
normal now, and the coat was only a coat. It had been his fevered
imagination that had endued the garment with some extraordinary
value. Gently she raised his head and withdrew the coat from under
the pillow.

"Why did I want it under my pillow?" he asked.

"You were a little out of your head."

Gravely he watched the needle flash to and fro. He noted the strong
white teeth as they snipped the thread. At length the task was
done, and she jabbed the needle into a cushion, folded the coat,
and rose.

"Do you want it back under the pillow?"

"Hang it over a chair. Or, better still, put all my clothes in the
trunk. They litter up the room. The key is in my trousers."

This business over, she returned to the bedside with the key. She
felt a little ashamed of herself, a bit of a hypocrite. Every
article in the trunk was fully known to her, through a recounting
of the list by the doctor. To hand the key back in silence was like
offering a lie.

"Put it under my pillow," he said.

Immediately she had spoken of the loose button he knew that
henceforth he must show no concern over the disposition of that
coat. He must not in any way call their attention to it. He must
preserve it, however, as they preserved the Ark of the Covenant. It
was his redemption, his ticket out of hell--that blue-serge coat.
To witness this girl sewing on a loose button, flopping the coat
about on her knees, tickled his ironic sense of humour; and
laughter bubbled into his throat. He smothered it down with such a
good will that the reaction set his heart to pounding. The walls
rocked, the footrail of the bed wavered, and the girl's head had
the nebulosity of a composite photograph. So he shut his eyes.
Presently he heard her voice.

"I must tell you," she was saying. "We went through your
belongings. We did not know where to send ... in case you died.
There was nothing in the pockets of the coat."

"Don't worry about that." He opened his eyes again.

"I wanted you to know. There is nobody, then?"

"Oh, there is an aunt. But if I were dying of thirst, in a desert,
I would not accept a cup of water at her hands. Will you read to
me? I am tired; and the sound of your voice makes me drowsy."

Half an hour later she laid aside the book. He was asleep. She
leaned forward, her chin in her palms, her elbows on her knees, and
she set her gaze upon his face and kept it there in dreamy
contemplation. Supposing he too wanted love and his arms were as
empty as hers?

Some living thing that depended upon her. The doll she had never
owned, the cat and the dog that had never been hers: here they
were, strangely incorporated in this sleeping man. He depended upon
her, for his medicine, for his drink, for the little amusement it
was now permissible to give him. The knowledge breathed into her
heart a satisfying warmth.

At noon the doctor himself arrived. "Go to lunch," he ordered Ruth.
He wanted to talk with the patient, test him variously; and he
wanted to be alone with him while he put these tests. His idea was
to get behind this sustained listlessness. "How goes it?" he began,
heartily. "A bit up in the world again; eh?"

"Why did you bother with me?"

"Because no human being has the right to die. Death belongs to God,
young man."

"Ah." The tone was neutral.

"And had you been the worst scoundrel unhung, I'd have seen to it
that you had the same care, the same chance. But don't thank me;
thank Miss Enschede. She caught the fact that it was something more
than strong drink that laid you out. If they hadn't sent for me,
you'd have pegged out before morning."

"Then I owe my life to her?"

"Positively."

"What do you want me to do?"

The doctor thought this query gave hopeful promise. "Always
remember the fact. She is something different. When I told her that
there were no available nurses this side of Hong-Kong, she offered
her services at once, and broke her journey. And I need not tell
you that her hotel bill is running on the same as yours."

"Do you want me to tell her that I am grateful?"

"Well, aren't you?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"Look here, my boy, that attitude is all damned nonsense. Here you
are, young, sound, with a heart that will recover in no time,
provided you keep liquor out of it. And you talk like that! What
the devil have you been up to, to land in this bog?" It was a cast
at random.

His guardian angel warned Spurlock to speak carefully. "I have been
very unhappy."

"So have we all. But we get over it. And you will."

After a moment Spurlock said: "Perhaps I am an ungrateful dog."

"That's better. Remember, if there's anything you'd like to get off
your chest, doctors and priests are in the same boat."

With no little effort--for the right words had a way of tumbling
back out of reach--he marshalled his phrases, and as he uttered
them, closed his eyes to lessen the possibility of a break. "I'm
only a benighted fool; and having said that, I have said
everything. I'm one of those unfortunate duffers who have too much
imagination--the kind who build their own chimeras and then run
away from them. How long shall I be kept in this bed?"

"That's particularly up to you. Ten days should see you on your
feet. But if you don't want to get up, maybe three times ten days."

There had never been, from that fatal hour eight months gone down
to this, the inclination to confess. He had often read about it,
and once he had incorporated it in a story, that invisible force
which sent men to prison and to the gallows, when a tongue
controlled would have meant liberty indefinite. As for himself,
there had never been a touch of it. It was less will than
education. Even in his fevered hours, so the girl had said, his
tongue had not betrayed him. Perhaps that sealed letter was a form
of confession, and thus relieved him on that score. And yet that
could not be: it was a confession only in the event of his death.
Living, he knew that he would never send that letter.

His conscience, however, was entirely another affair. He could
neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with
white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell
someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then?
Was it what he had lost--the familiar world--rather than what he
had done?

He stared dully at the footrail. For the present the desire to fly
was gone. No doubt that was due to his helplessness. When he was up
and about, the idea of flight would return. But how far could he
fly on a few hundred? True, he might find a job somewhere; but
every footstep from behind...!

"Who is she? Where does she come from?"

"You mean Miss Enschede?"

"Yes. That dress she has on--my mother might have worn it."

He was beginning to notice things, then? The doctor was pleased.
The boy was coming around.

"Miss Enschede was born on an island in the South Seas. She is
setting out for Hartford, Connecticut. The dress was her mother's,
and she was wearing it to save a little extra money."

The doctor had entered the room fully determined to tell the
patient the major part of Ruth's story, to inspire him with proper
respect and gratitude. Instead, he could not get beyond these minor
details--why she wore the dress, whence she had come, and whither
she was bound. The idea of this sudden reluctance was elusive; the
fact was evident but not the reason for it.

"How would you like a job on a copra plantation?" he asked,
irrelevantly to the thoughts crowding one another in his mind. "Out
of the beaten track, with a real man for an employer? How would
that strike you?"

Interest shot into Spurlock's eyes; it spread to his wan face. Out
of the beaten track! He must not appear too eager. "I'll need a job
when I quit this bed. I'm not particular what or where."

"That kind of talk makes you sound like a white man. Of course, I
can't promise you the job definitely. But I've an old friend on the
way here, and he knows the game down there. If he hasn't a job for
you, he'll know someone who has. Managers and accountants are
always shifting about, so he tells me. It's mighty lonesome down
there for a man bred to cities."

"Find me the job. I don't care how lonesome it is."

Out of the beaten track! thought Spurlock. A forgotten island
beyond the ship lanes, where that grim Hand would falter and move
blindly in its search for him! From what he had read, there
wouldn't be much to do; and in the idle hours he could write.

"Thanks," he said, holding out a thin white hand. "I'll be very
glad to take that kind of a job, if you can find it."

"Well, that's fine. Got you interested in something, then? Would
you like a peg?"

"No. I hated the stuff. There was a pleasant numbness in the
bottle; that's why I went to it."

"Thought so. But I had to know for sure. Down there, whisky raises
the very devil with white men. Don't build your hopes too high; but
I will do what I can. While there's life there's hope. Buck up."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

"You or this girl. There are, then, in this sorry world, people who
can be disinterestedly kind!"

The doctor laughed, gave Spurlock's shoulder a pat, and left the
room. Outside the door he turned and stared at the panels. Why
hadn't he gone on with the girl's story? What instinct had stuffed
it back into his throat? Why the inexplicable impulse to hurry this
rather pathetic derelict on his way?

CHAPTER XV

Previous to his illness, Spurlock's mind had been tortured by an
appalling worry, so that now, in the process of convalescence, it
might be compared to a pool which had been violently stirred: there
were indications of subsidence, but there were still strange forms
swirling on the surface--whims and fancies which in normal times
would never have risen above sub-consciousness.

Little by little the pool cleared, the whims vanished: so that both
Ruth and the doctor, by the middle of the third week, began to
accept Spurlock's actions as normal, whereas there was still a mote
or two which declined to settle, still a kink in the gray matter
that refused to straighten out.

Spurlock began to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first,
with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literary
instincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for future
copy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type,
which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather the
incarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able to
recognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a natural woman.

His attitude toward her was purely intellectual, free of any
sentimentality, utterly selfish. Ruth was not a woman; she was a
phenomenon. So, adroitly and patiently, he pulled Ruth apart; that
is, he plucked forth a little secret here, another there, until he
had quite a substantial array. What he did not know was this: Ruth
surrendered these little secrets because the doctor had warned her
that the patient must be amused and interested.

From time to time, however, he was baffled. The real tragedy--which
he sensed and toward which he was always reaching--eluded all his
verbal skill. It was not a cambric curtain Ruth had drawn across
that part of her life: it was of iron. Ruth could tell the doctor;
she could bare many of her innermost thoughts to that kindly man;
but there was an inexplicable reserve before this young man whom
she still endued with the melancholy charm of Sydney Carton. It was
not due to shyness: it was the inherent instinct of the Woman, a
protective fear that she must retain some elements of mystery in
order to hold the interest of the male.

When she told him that the natives called her The Dawn Pearl, his
delight was unbounded. He addressed her by that title, and
something in the tone disturbed her. A sophisticated woman would
have translated the tone as a caress. And yet to Spurlock it was
only the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressing
an idea.

The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his own
imagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle;
defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewhere
along the way he would write a story worth while. Already he was
dramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thieving
adventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. But
somehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end.
Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular fact
that Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.

One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men had
tried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough.
The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because the
eyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly what
he was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she would
act.

"I haven't offended you?"--not contritely but curiously.

"No"--as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

Something in her lack of embarrassment irritated him. "Has no man
ever kissed you?"

"No." Which was literally the truth.

He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man had
kissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But his
astonishment would have been great indeed had he known that not
even her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or with
hands.

Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of the
kiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequently
encountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments and
latterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her--unshaven derelicts,
some of them terrible--but she had always managed to escape. What
had urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct of
the good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of those
men...!

She knew what arms were for--to fold and embrace and to hold one
tightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profound
mystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in love
stories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all human
beings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her an
anomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.

This salute of his--actually the first she could remember--while it
did not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new channels
of speculation. The more her thoughts dwelt upon the subject, the
more convinced she was that she could not go to any one for help;
she would have to solve the riddle by her own efforts, by some
future experience.

"The Dawn Pearl," he said.

"The natives have foolish ways of saying things."

"On the contrary, if that is a specimen, they must be poets. Tell
me about your island. I have never seen a lagoon."

"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island is
like."

He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he had
imagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be free
of outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon the
scraps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed,
he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, with
the ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarred
face; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of white
sand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf,
sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandy
floor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; the
screaming parakeets in the plantains; the fishing proas; the
mission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; the
lagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placid
sapphire.

"I think the natives saw you coming out of the lagoon, one dawn.
For you say that you swim. Wonderful! The water, dripping from you,
must have looked like pearls. Do you know what? You're some sea
goddess and you're only fooling us."

He opened his eyes, to behold hers large with wonder.

"And you saw all that in your mind?"

"It wasn't difficult. You yourself supplied the details. All I had
to do was to piece them together."

"But I never told you how the natives fished."

"Perhaps I read of it somewhere."

"Still, you forgot something."

"What did I forget?"

"The breathless days and the faded, pitiless sky. Nothing to do;
nothing for the hands, the mind, the heart. To wait for hours and
hours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot the
monotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you and
crushes you--you forgot that!"

Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with passionate
anger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was full
of it. Pearls in the dawn light, flashing and burning!

"You don't like your island?"

"I hate it!... But, there!"--weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I
shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."

"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant
it.

She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more;
the excitement isn't good for you."

Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she
hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was
drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual
beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!

"You've been lonely, too."

"You mustn't talk."

He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if
someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes,
and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an
eye. With nobody who cares ... the both of us!"

He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul.
She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat
perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he
would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend
upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her
again. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thought
of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world
besides, looming darker and larger.

"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he
was the searcher.

"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly
transfixed by some inner glory.

"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his
bed--the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever
lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered
his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!--and
never again to behold them!

"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be
alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."

He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been
submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of
himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell
into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures,
each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with
rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her
flashing to and fro among the coco palms in the moonshine: he saw
her breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beauty
as the Winged Victory of the Louvre. The queer phase of the dream
was this, she was at no time a woman; she was symbolical of
something, and he followed to learn what this something was. There
was a lapse of time, an interval of blackness; then he found his
hand in hers and she was leading him at a run up the side of the
mountain.

His heart beat wildly and he was afraid lest the strain be too
much; but the girl shook her head and smiled and pointed to the top
of the mountain. All at once they came to the top, the faded blue
sky overhead, and whichever way he looked, the horizon, the great
rocking circle which hemmed them in. She pointed hither and yon,
smiled and shook her head. Then he understood. Nowhere could he see
that reaching, menacing Hand. So long as she stood beside him, he
was safe. That was what she was trying to make him understand.

He awoke, strangely content. As it happens sometimes, the idea
stepped down from the dream into the reality; and he saw it more
clearly now than he had seen it in the dream. It filled his
thoughts for the rest of the day, and became an obsession. How to
hold her, how to keep her at his side; this was the problem with
which he struggled.

When she came in after dinner that night, Ruth was no longer an
interesting phenomenon, something figuratively to tear apart and
investigate: she was talismanic. So long as she stood beside him,
the Hand would not prevail.

CHAPTER XVI

Ah cum began to worry. Each morning his inquiry was properly
answered: the patient was steadily improving, but none could say
when he would be strong enough to proceed upon his journey. The
tourist season would soon be at ebb, and it would be late in
September before the tide returned. So, then, fifty gold was
considerable; it would carry Ah Cum across four comparatively idle
months. And because of this hanging gold Ah Cum left many doors
open to doubt.

Perhaps the doctor, the manager and the girl were in collusion:
perhaps they had heard indirectly of the visit paid by Mr.
O'Higgins, the American detective, and were waiting against the
hour when they could assist the young man in a sudden dash for
liberty. Why not? Were not his own sentiments inclined in favour of
the patient? But fifty gold was fifty gold.

One morning, as he took his stand on the Hong-Kong packet dock to
ambush the possible tourist, he witnessed the arrival of a tubby
schooner, dirty gray and blotched as though she had run through
fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab,
her brasses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one
clean spot in the picture--the ship's wash (all white) that
fluttered on a line stretched between the two masts. The half-nude
brown bodies of the crew informed Ah Cum that the schooner had come
up from the South Seas. The boiling under her stern, however, told
him nothing. He was not a sailor. It would not have interested him
in the least to learn that the tub ran on two powers--wind and oil.

Sampans with fish and fruit and vegetables swarmed about, while
overhead gulls wheeled and swooped and circled. One of the sampans
was hailed, and a rope-ladder was lowered. Shortly a man descended
laboriously. He was dressed immaculately in a suit of heavy
Shantung silk. His face was half hidden under a freshly pipeclayed
_sola topee_--sun-helmet. He turned and shouted some orders to the
Kanaka crew, then nodded to the sampan's coolies, who bore upon the
sweeps and headed for the Sha-mien.

Ah Cum turned to his own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub
was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had
shifted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of
three who were coming down the packet gang-plank. The trio
exhibited that indecisive air with which Ah Cum was tolerably
familiar. They were looking for a guide. Forthwith he presented his
card.

The Reverend Henry Dolby had come to see China; for that purpose he
had, with his wife and daughter, traversed land and sea to the
extent of ten thousand miles. Actually, he had come all this
distance simply to fulfil a certain clause in his contract with
Fate, to be in Canton on this particular day.

Meantime, as the doctor was splitting his breakfast orange, he
heard a commotion in his office, two rooms removed: volleys of
pidgin English, one voice in protest, the other dominant. This was
followed by heavy footsteps, and in another moment the dining-room
door was flung open.

The doctor jumped to his feet. "Mac, you old son-of-a-gun!"

"Got a man's breakfast?" McClintock demanded to know.

"Tom! Hey, Tom!" The Chinese cook thrust his head into the dining
room. "Those chops, fried potatoes, and buttered toast."

"Aw light!"

The two old friends held each other off at arms' length for
inspection; this proving satisfactory, they began to prod and
pummel one another affectionately. No hair to fall awry, no powder
to displace, no ruffles to crush; men are lucky. Women never throw
themselves into each other's arms; they calculate the distance and
the damage perfectly.

They sat down, McClintock reaching for a lump of sugar which he
began munching.

"Come up by the packet?"

"No; came up with _The Tigress_."

"_The Tigress!_" The doctor laughed. "You'd have hit it off better
if you'd called her _The Sow_. I'll bet you haven't given her a
bucket of paint in three years. Oh, I know. You give her a daub
here and there where the rust shows. A man as rich as you are ought
to have a thousand-ton yacht."

"Good enough for me. She's plenty clean below."

"I'll bet she still smells to heaven with sour coconut. Bring your
liveralong?"

"I sometimes wonder if I have any--if it isn't the hole where it
was that aches."

"You look pretty fit."

"Oh, a shave and a clean suit will do a lot. It's a pity you
wouldn't give me the prescription instead of the medicine, so I
could have it filled nearer home."

"I'd never set eyes on you again. You'd be coming up to Hong-Kong,
but you'd be cutting out Canton. I'll bet you've been in Hong-Kong
these two weeks already, and never a line to me."

"Didn't want any lectures spoiling a good time."

"How long will you be here?"

"To-morrow night. It's sixteen days down, with _The Tigress_. The
South China will be dropping to a dead calm, and I want to use
canvas as much as I can. You simply can't get good oil down there,
so I must husband the few drams I carry."

"What a life!"

"No worse than yours."

"But I'm a poor man. I'm always shy the price of the ticket home.
You're rich. You could return to civilization and have a good time
all the rest of your days."

"Two weeks in Hong-Kong," replied McClintock, "is more than
enough."

"But, Lord, man!--don't you ever get lonesome?"

"Don't you?"

"I'm too busy."

"So am I. I am carrying back a hundred new books and forty new
records for the piano-player. Whenever I feel particularly
gregarious, I take the launch and run over to Copeley's and play
poker for a couple of days. Lonesomeness isn't my worry. I can't
keep a good man beyond three pay-days. They want some fun, and
there isn't any. No other white people within twenty miles. I've
combed Hong-Kong. They all balk because there aren't any
petticoats. I won't have a beachcomber on the island. The job is
easy. The big pay strikes them; but when they find there's no place
to spend it, good-bye!"

Tom the cook came in with the chops and the potatoes--the doctor's
dinner--and McClintock fell to with a gusto which suggested that
there was still some liver under his ribs. The doctor smoked his
pipe thoughtfully.

"Mac, did you ever run across a missioner by the name of Enschede?"

"Enschede?" McClintock stared at the ceiling. "Sounds as if I had
heard it, but I can't place it this minute. Certainly I never met
him. Why?"

"I was just wondering. You say you need a man. Just how particular
are you? Will he have to bring recommendations?"

"He will not. His face will be all I need. Have you got someone in
mind for me?"

"Finish your breakfast and I'll tell you the story." Ten minutes
later, the doctor, having marshalled all his facts chronologically,
began his tale. He made it brief. "Of course, I haven't the least
evidence that the boy has done anything wrong; it's what I'd call a
hunch; piecing this and that together."

"Are you friendly toward him?" asked McClintock, passing a fine
cigar across the table.

"Yes. The boy doesn't know it, but I dug into his trunk for
something to identify him and stumbled upon some manuscripts.
Pretty good stuff, some of it. The subject matter was generally
worthless, but the handling was well done. You're always
complaining that you can't keep anybody more than three months. If
my conjectures are right, this boy would stay there indefinitely."

"I don't know," said McClintock.

"But you said you weren't particular. Moreover, he's a Yale
University man, and he'd be good company."

"What's he know about copra and native talk?"

"Nothing, probably; but I'll wager he'll pick it all up fast
enough."

"A fugitive."

"But that's the point--I don't know. But supposing he is? Supposing
he made but one misstep? Your island would be a haven of security.
I know something about men."

"I agree to that. But it strikes me there's a nigger in the
woodpile somewhere, as you Yankees say. Why are you so anxious?"

"Oh, if you can't see your way...."

"I'll have a look-see before I make any decision. It's your
eagerness that bothers me. You seem to want this chap out of
Canton."

The doctor hesitated, puffing his tobacco hastily. "There's a young
woman."

"I remember now!" interrupted McClintock. "This Enschede--the
missioner. One of his converted Kanakas dropped in one day. He
called Enschede the Bellower. Seems Enschede's daughter ran away
and left him, and he's combing the islands in search of her. He's a
hundred miles sou'-east of me."

"Well, this young lady I was about to describe," said the doctor,
"is Enschede's daughter."

McClintock whistled. "Oho!" he said. "So she got away as far as
this, eh? But where does she come in?"

The doctor recounted that side of the tale. "And so I want the boy
out of the way," he concluded. "She in intensely impressionable and
romantic, and probably she is giving the chap qualities he doesn't
possess. All the talk in the world would not describe Ruth. You
have to see her to understand."

"And what are you going to do with her, supposing I'm fool enough
to take this boy with me?"

"Send her to my people, in case she cannot find her aunt."

"I see. Afraid there'll be a love-affair. Well, I'll have a look-see
at this young De Maupassant. I know faces. Down in my part of the
world it's all a man has to go by. But if he's in bed, how the devil
is he going with me, supposing I decide to hire him? The mudhook
comes up to-morrow night."

"I can get him aboard all right. A sea voyage under sail will be
the making of him."

"Let's toddle over to the Victoria at once. I'll do anything in
reason for you, old top; but no pig in a poke. Enschede's daughter.
Things happen out this way. That's a queer yarn."

"It's a queer girl."

"With a face as square and flat as a bottle of gin. I know the
Dutch." He sent the doctor a sly glance.

"She's the most beautiful creature you ever set eyes on," said the
doctor, warmly. "That's the whole difficulty. I want her to get
forward, to set her among people who'll understand what to do with
her."

"Ship her back to her father"--sagely.

"No. I tell you, that girl would jump into the sea, rather.
Something happened down there, and probably I'll never know what.
Every time you mention the father, she turns into marble. No; she'd
never go back. Mac, she's the honestest human being I ever saw or
heard of; and at the same time she is velvet over steel. And yet,
she would be easy prey in her present state of mind to any
plausible, attractive scoundrel. That's why I'm so anxious to get
her to a haven."

"Come along, then. You've got me interested and curious. If you
were ten years younger, you'd have me wondering."

The doctor did not reply to this rather ambiguous statement, but
pushed back his chair and signed to McClintock to follow. They
found Ruth reading to Spurlock, whose shoulders and head were
propped by pillows.

McClintock did not exaggerate his ability to read faces. It was his
particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given
him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read
much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over
him--pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old
imbecile! Why, this child was a firebrand, a wrecker, if ever he
had seen one; and the worst kind because she was unconscious of her
gifts.

As for the patient, his decision was immediate. Here was no crooked
soul; a little weak perhaps, impulsive beyond common, but
fundamentally honest. Given time and the right environment, and he
would outgrow these defects. Confidence in himself would strengthen
him. If the boy had done anything wrong back there in the States,
his would be the brand of conscience to pay him out in full. With a
little more meat on him, he would be handsome.

"My friend here," said McClintock, "tells me you are looking for a
job."

"Yes."

"Well, I've a job open; but I don't want you to get the wrong idea
of it. In the first place, it will be damnably dull. You won't
often see white folks. There will be long stretches of idleness,
heat, and enervation; and always the odour of drying coconut. A
good deal of the food will be in tins. You'll live to hate chicken;
and the man in you will rise up and demand strong drink. But nobody
drinks on my island unless I offer it, which is seldom. If there is
any drinking, I'll do it."

Spurlock smiled at the doctor.

"He'll not trouble you on the liquor side, Mac."

[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Corporation. The Ragged Edge._
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

"So much the better. You will have a bungalow to yourself,"
continued McClintock, "and your morning meal will be your own
affair. But luncheon and dinners you will sit at my table. I'm a
stickler about clothes and clean chins. How you dress when you're
loafing will be no concern of mine; but fresh twill or Shantung,
when you dine with me, collar and tie. If you like books and music,
we'll get along."

"Then you are taking me on?" Spurlock's eyes grew soft like those
of a dog that, expecting the whip, saw only the kindly hand.

"I am going to give you a try."

"When will you want me?"--with pitiful eagerness. "How shall I get
to you?"

"My yacht is in the river. The doctor here says he can get you
aboard to-morrow night. But understand me thoroughly: I am offering
you this job because my friend wants to help you. I don't know
anything about you. I am gambling on his intuition." McClintock
preferred to put it thus.

"To-morrow night!" said Spurlock, in a wondering whisper. Out of
the beaten track, far from the trails of men! He relaxed.

The doctor reached over and laid his hand upon Spurlock's heart.
"Thumping; but that's only excitement. You'll do."

Then he looked at Ruth. Her face expressed nothing. That was one of
the mysterious qualities of this child of the lagoon: she had
always at instant service that Oriental mask of impenetrable calm
that no Occidental trick could dislodge. He could not tell by the
look of her whether she was glad or sorry that presently she would
be free.

"I have good news for you. If you do not find your aunt, my people
will take you under wing until you can stand on your own."

"That is very kind of you," she acknowledged. The lips of the mask
twisted upward into a smile.

The doctor missed the expression of terror and dismay that flitted
across Spurlock's face.

Once they were below, McClintock turned upon the doctor. "I can
readily see," he said, "why you'll always be as poor as a church
mouse."

"What?" said the doctor, whose thoughts were in something of a
turmoil. "What's that?"

"The old human cry of something for nothing; but with you it is in
reverse. You are always doing something for nothing, and that is
why I love you. If I offered you half of my possessions, you'd
doubtless wallop me on the jaw. To be with you is the best moral
tonic I know. You tonic my liver and you tonic my soul. It is good
sometimes to walk with a man who can look God squarely in the face,
as you can."

"But wasn't I right? That pair?"

"I'll take the boy; he'll be a novelty. Amiable and good-looking.
That's the kind, my friend, that always fall soft. No matter what
they do, always someone to bolster them up, to lend them money, and
to coddle them."

"But, man, this chap hasn't fallen soft."

"Ay, but he will. And here's the proof. You and the girl have made
it soft for him, and I'm going to make it soft for him. But what I
do is based upon the fact that he is one of those individuals who
are conscience-driven. Conscience drove him to this side of the
world, to this bed. It drives him to my island, where I can study
him to my heart's content. He believes that he is leaving this
conscience behind; and I want to watch his disillusion on this
particular point. Oh, don't worry. I shall always be kind to him; I
sha'n't bait him. Only, he'll be an interesting specimen for me to
observe. But ship that girl east as soon as you can."

"Why?"

McClintock put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Because she's a
fire-opal, and to the world at large they bring bad luck."

"Rot! Mac, what do you suppose the natives used to call her? The
Dawn Pearl!"

McClintock wagged his Scotch head negatively. He knew what he knew.

Spurlock possessed that extraordinary condition of the mind which
is called New England conscience. Buried under various ancestral
sixteenths, smothered under modern thought, liberty of action and
bewildering variety of flesh-pots, it was still alive to the extent
that it needed only his present state to resuscitate it in all its
peculiar force. The Protestant Flagellant, who whipped his soul
rather than his body, who made self-denial the rack and the boot,
who believed that on Sunday it was sacrilegious to smile,
blasphemous to laugh! Spurlock had gone back spiritually three
hundred years. In the matter of his conscience he was primitive;
and for an educated man to become primitive is to become something
of a child.

From midnight until morning he was now left alone. He had
sufficient strength to wait upon himself. During the previous night
he had been restless; and in the lonely dragging hours his thoughts
had raced in an endless circle--action without progress. He was
reaching wearily for some kind of buffer to his harrying
conscience. He thought rationally; that is to say, he thought
clearly, as a child thinks clearly. The primitive superstition of
his Puritan forbears was his; and before this the buckler of his
education disintegrated. The idea of Ruth as a talisman against
misfortune--which he now recognized as a sick man's idea--faded as
his appreciation of the absurd reasserted itself. But in its
stead--toward morning--there appeared another idea which appealed to
him as sublime, appealed to the primitive conscience, to his
artistic sense of the drama, to the poet and the novelist in him. He
was and always would be dramatizing his emotions; perpetually he
would be confounding his actual with his imaginary self.

To surrender himself to the law, to face trial and imprisonment,
was out of the question. Let the law put its hand on his
shoulder--if it could! But at present he was at liberty, and he
purposed to remain in that state. His conscience never told him to
go back and take his punishment; it tortured him only in regard to
the deed itself. He had tossed an honoured name into the mire; he
required no prison bars to accentuate this misery.

Something, then, to appease the wrath of God; something to blunt
this persistent agony. It was not necessary to appease the wrath of
human society; it was necessary only to appease that of God for the
broken Commandment. To divide the agony into two spheres so that
one would mitigate the other. In fine, to marry Ruth (if she would
consent) as a punishment for what he had done! To whip his soul so
long as he lived, but to let his body go free! To provide for her,
to work and dream for her, to be tender and thoughtful and loyal,
to shelter and guard her, to become accountable to God for her
future.

It was the sing-song girl idea, magnified many diameters. In this
hour its colossal selfishness never occurred to him.

So, then, when McClintock offered the coveted haven, Spurlock
became afire to dramatize the idea.

"Ruth!"

She had gone to the door, aimlessly, without purpose. All the
sombre visions she had been pressing back, fighting out of her
thoughts, swarmed over the barrier and crushed her. She did not
want to go to the doctor's people; however kindly that might be,
they would be only curious strangers. She would never return to her
father; that resolution was final. What she actually wanted was the
present state of affairs to continue indefinitely.

That is what terrified her: the consciousness that nothing in her
life would be continuous, that she would no sooner form friendships
(like the present) than relentless fate would thrust her into a new
circle. All the initial confidence in herself was gone; her courage
was merely a shell to hide the lack. To have the present lengthen
into years! But in a few hours she would be upon her way, far
lonelier than she had ever been. As Spurlock called her name, she
paused and turned.

"Dawn Pearl!... come here!"

She moved to the side of the bed. "What is it?"

"Can't you see? Together, down there; you and I!... As my wife!
Both of us, never to be lonely again!... Will you marry me, Ruth?"

As many a wiser woman had done, Ruth mistook thrilling eagerness
for love. Love and companionship. A fire enveloped her, a fire
which was strangely healing, filling her heart with warmth,
blotting out the menace of the world. She forgot her vital hatred
of the South Seas; she forgot that McClintock's would not differ a
jot from the old island she had for ever left behind her; she
forgot all the doctor's lessons and warnings.

She would marry him. Because of the thought of love and
companionship? No. Because here was the haven for which she had
been blindly groping: the positive abolition of all her father's
rights in her--the right to drag her back. The annihilation of the
Terror which fascinated her and troubled her dreams o' nights.

"You want me, then?" she said.

"Oh, yes!--for always!"

He took her hands and pressed them upon his thrumming heart; and in
this attitude they remained for some time.

Something forbade him to draw her toward him and seal the compact
with a kiss. Down under the incalculable selfishness of the
penitent child there was the man's uneasy recollection of Judas. He
could not kiss Ruth.

CHAPTER XVII

After the Ten Commandments have been spoken, conscience becomes
less something inherent than something acquired. It is now a point
of view, differing widely, as the ignorant man differs from the
educated. You and I will agree upon the Ten Commandments; but
perhaps we will refuse to accept the other's interpretation of the
ramifications. I step on my neighbour's feet, return and apologize
because my acquired conscience orders me to do so; whereas you
might pass on without caring if your neighbour hopped about on one
foot. The inherent conscience keeps most of us away from jail, from
court, from the gallows; the acquired conscience helps us to
preserve the little amenities of daily life. So then, the acquired
is the livelier phase, being driven into action daily; whereas the
inherent may lie dormant for months, even years.

To Spurlock, in this hour, his conscience stood over against the
Ten Commandments, one of which he had broken. He became primitive,
literal in his conception; the ramifications were, for the nonce,
fairly relegated to limbo. He could not kiss Ruth because the
acquired conscience--struggling on its way to limbo--made the idea
repellant. Analysis would come later, when the primitive
conscience, satisfied, would cease to dominate his thought and
action.

Since morning he had become fanatical; the atoms of common sense no
longer functioned in the accustomed groove. And yet he knew clearly
and definitely what he purposed to do, what the future would be.
This species of madness cannot properly be attributed to his
illness, though its accent might be. For a time he would be the
grim Protestant Flagellant, pursuing the idea of self-castigation.
That he was immolating Ruth on the altar of his conscience never
broke in upon his thought for consideration. The fanatic has no
such word in his vocabulary.

Ruth had not expected to be kissed; so the omission passed unnoted.
For her it was sufficient to know that somebody wanted her, that
never again would she be alone, that always this boy with the
dreams would be depending upon her.

A strange betrothal!--the primal idea of which was escape! The
girl, intent upon abrogating for ever all legal rights of the
father in the daughter, of rendering innocuous the thing she had
now named the Terror: the boy, seeking self-crucifixion in
expiation of his transgression, changing a peccadillo into
damnation!

It was easy for Ruth to surrender to the idea, for she believed she
was loved; and in gratitude it was already her determination to
give this boy her heart's blood, drop by drop, if he wanted it. To
her, marriage would be a buckler against the two evils which
pursued her.

There was nothing on the Tablets of Moses that forebade Spurlock
marrying Ruth; there were no previous contracts. And yet, Spurlock
was afraid of the doctor; so was Ruth. They agreed that they must
marry at once, this morning, before the doctor could suspect what
was toward. The doctor would naturally offer a hundred objections;
he might seriously interfere; so he must be forestalled.

What marriage really meant (aside from the idea of escape), Ruth
had not the least conception, no more than a child. If she had any
idea at all, it was something she dimly recalled from her books:
something celestially beautiful, with a happy ending. But the
clearly definite thing was the ultimate escape. Wherein she
differed but little from her young sisters.

That is what marriage is to most young women: the ultimate escape
from the family, from the unwritten laws that govern children.
Whether they are loved or unloved has no bearing upon this desire
to test their wings, to try this new adventure, to take this leap
into the dark.

Spurlock possessed a vigorous intellect, critical, disquisitional,
creative; and yet he saw nothing remarkable in the girl's readiness
to marry him! An obsession is a blind spot.

"We must marry at once! The doctor may put me on the boat and force
you to remain behind, otherwise."

"And you want me to find a minister?" she asked, with ready
comprehension.

"That's it!"--eagerly. "Bring him back with you. Some of the hotel
guests can act as witnesses. Make haste!"

Ruth hurried off to her own room. Before she put on her sun-helmet,
she paused before the mirror. Her wedding gown! She wondered if the
spirit of the unknown mother looked down upon her.

"All I want is to be happy!" she said aloud, as if she were asking
for something of such ordinary value that God would readily accord
it to her because there was so little demand for the commodity.

Thrilling, she began to dance, swirled, glided, and dipped.
Whenever ecstasy--any kind of ecstasy--filled her heart to
bursting, these physical expressions eased the pressure.

Fate has two methods of procedure--the sudden and the
long-drawn-out. In some instances she tantalizes the victim for
years and mocks him in the end. In others, she acts with the speed
and surety of the loosed arrow. In the present instance she did not
want any interference; she did not want the doctor's wisdom to edge
in between these two young fools and spoil the drama. So she brought
upon the stage the Reverend Henry Dolby, a preacher of means,
worldly-wise and kindly, cheery and rotund, who, with his wife and
daughter, had arrived at the Victoria that morning. Ruth met him in
the hall as he was following his family into the dining room. She
recognized the cloth at once, waylaid him, and with that directness
of speech particularly hers she explained what she wanted.

"To be sure I will, my child. I will be up with my wife and
daughter after lunch."

"We'll be waiting for you. You are very kind." Ruth turned back
toward the stairs.

Later, when the Reverend Henry Dolby entered the Spurlock room, his
wife and daughter trailing amusedly behind him, and beheld the
strained eagerness on the two young faces, he smiled inwardly and
indulgently. Here were the passionate lovers! What their past had
been he neither cared nor craved to know. Their future would be
glorious; he saw it in their eyes; he saw it in the beauty of their
young heads. Of course, at home there would have been questions.
Were the parents agreeable? Were they of age? Had the license been
procured? But here, in a far country, only the velvet manacles of
wedlock were necessary.

So, forthwith, without any preliminaries beyond introductions, he
began the ceremony; and shortly Ruth Enschede became Ruth Spurlock,
for better or for worse. Spurlock gave his full name and
tremblingly inscribed it upon the certificate of marriage.

The customary gold band was missing; but a soft gold Chinese ring
Spurlock had picked up in Singapore--the characters representing
good luck and prosperity--was slipped over Ruth's third finger.

"There is no fee," said Dolby. "I am very happy to be of service to
you. And I wish you all the happiness in the world."

Mrs. Dolby was portly and handsome. There were lines in her face
that age had not put there. Guiding this man of hers over the
troubled sea of life had engraved these lines. He was the true
optimist; and that he should proceed, serenely unconscious of reefs
and storms, she accepted the double buffets.

This double buffetting had sharpened her shrewdness and insight.
Where her husband saw only two youngsters in the mating mood, she
felt that tragedy in some phase lurked in this room--if only in the
loneliness of these two, without kith or kin apparently, thousands
of miles from home. Not once during the ceremony did the two look
at each other, but riveted their gaze upon the lips of the man who
was forging the bands: gazed intensively, as if they feared the
world might vanish before the last word of the ceremony was spoken.

Spurlock relaxed, suddenly, and sank deeply into his pillows. Ruth
felt his hand grow cold as it slipped from hers. She bent down.

"You are all right?"--anxiously.

"Yes ... but dreadfully tired."

Mrs. Dolby smiled. It was the moment for smiles. She approached
Ruth with open arms; and something in the way the child came into
that kindly embrace hurt the older woman to the point of tears.

These passers-by who touch us but lightly and are gone, leaving the
eternal imprint! So long as she lived, Ruth would always remember
that embrace. It was warm, shielding, comforting, and what was
more, full of understanding. It was in fact the first embrace of
motherhood she had ever known. Even after this woman had gone, it
seemed to Ruth that the room was kindlier than it had ever been.

Inexplicably there flashed into vision the Chinese wedding
procession in the narrow, twisted streets of the city, that first
day: the gorgeous palanquin, the tom-toms, the weird music, the
ribald, jeering mob that trailed along behind. It was surely odd
that her thought should pick up that picture and recast it so
vividly.

At half after five that afternoon the doctor and his friend
McClintock entered the office of the Victoria.

"It's a great world," was the manager's greeting.

"So it is," the doctor agreed. "But what, may I ask, arouses the
thought?"

The doctor was in high good humour. Within forty-eight hours the
girl would be on her way east and the boy see-sawing the South
China Sea, for ever moving at absolute angles.

"Then you haven't heard?"

"Of what?"

"Well, well!" cried the manager, delighted at the idea of
surprising the doctor. "Miss Enschede and Mr. Spurlock--for that's
his real name--were married at high noon."

Emptiness; that was the doctor's initial sensation: his vitals had
been whisked out of him and the earth from under his feet. All his
interest in Ruth, all his care and solicitude, could now be
translated into a single word--love. Wanted her out of the way
because he had been afraid of her, afraid of himself! He, at
fifty-four! Then into this void poured a flaming anger, a blind and
unreasoning anger. He took the first step toward the stairs, and
met the restraining hand of McClintock.

"Steady, old top! What are you going to do?"

"The damned scoundrel!"

"I told you that child was opal."

"She? My God, the pity of it! She knows nothing of life. She no
more realizes what she has done than a child of eight. Marriage!
... without the least conception of the physical and moral
responsibilities! It's a crime, Mac!"

"But what can you do?" McClintock turned to the manager. "'It was
all perfectly legal?

"My word for it. The Reverend Henry Dolby performed the cermony,
and his wife and daughter were witnesses."

"When you heard what was going on, why didn't you send for me?"

"I didn't know it was going on. I heard only after it was all
over."

"If he could stand on two feet, I'd break every bone in his
worthless body!"

McClintock said soothingly: "But that wouldn't nullify the
marriage, old boy. I know. Thing's upset you a bit. Go easy."

"But, Mac . . . !"

"I understand," interrupted McClintock. Then, in a whisper: "But
there's no reason why the whole hotel should."

The doctor relaxed. "I've got to see him; but I'll be reasonable.
I've got to know why. And what will they do, and where will they
go?"

"With me--the both of them. So far as I'm concerned, nothing could
please me more. A married man!--the kind I've never been able to
lure down there! But keep your temper in check. Don't lay it all to
the boy. The girl is in it as deeply as he is. I'll wait for you
down here."

When the doctor entered the bedroom and looked into the faces of
the culprits, he laughed brokenly. Two children, who had been
caught in the jam-closet: ingratiating smiles, back of which lay
doubt and fear.

Ruth came to him directly. "You are angry?"

"Very. You don't realize what you have done."

"My courage gave out. The thought of going back!--the thought of
the unknown out there!--" with a tragic gesture toward the east. "I
couldn't go on!"

"You'll need something more than courage now. But no more of that.
What is done cannot be undone. I want to talk to Mr. Spurlock. Will
you leave us for a few minutes?"

"You are not going to be harsh?"

"I wish to talk about the future."

"Very well."

She departed reluctantly. The doctor walked over to the bed, folded
his arms across his chest and stared down into the unabashed eyes
of his patient.

"Do you realize that you are several kinds of a damned scoundrel?"
he began. This did not affect Spurlock. "Your name is Spurlock?"

"It is."

"Why did you use the name of Taber?"

"To keep my real name out of the mess I expected to make of myself
over here."

"That's frank enough," the doctor admitted astonishedly. So far the
boy's mind was clear. "But to drag this innocent child into the
muck! With her head full of book nonsense--love stories and fairy
stories! Have you any idea of the tragedy she is bound to stumble
upon some day? I don't care about you. The world is known to you. I
can see that you were somebody, in another day. But this child! ...
It's a damnable business!"

"I shall defend her and protect her with every drop of blood in my
body!" replied the Flagellant.

The intensity of the eyes and the defiant tone bewildered the
doctor, who found his well-constructed jeremiad without a platform.
So he was forced to shift and proceed at another angle, forgetting
his promise to McClintock to be temperate.

"When I went through your trunk that first night, I discovered an
envelope filled with manuscripts. Later, at the bottom of that
envelope I found a letter."

"To be opened in case of my death," added Spurlock. From under his
pillow he dragged forth the key to the trunk. "Here, take this and
get the letter and open and read it. Would you tell her ... now?"
his eyes flaming with mockery.

CHAPTER XVIII

The doctor reached for the key and studied it sombrely. The act was
mechanical, a bit of sparring for time: his anger was searching
about for a new vent. He was a just man, and he did not care to
start any thunder which was not based upon fairness. He had no wish
to go foraging in Spurlock's trunk. He had already shown the
covering envelope and its instructions to Ruth, and she had ignored
or misunderstood the warning. The boy was right. Ruth could not be
told now. There would be ultimate misery, but it would be needless
cruelty to give her a push toward it. But all these hours, trying
to teach the child wariness toward life, and the moment his back
was turned, this!

He was, perhaps, still dazed by the inner revelation--his own
interest in Ruth. The haste to send her upon her way now had but
one interpretation--the recognition of his own immediate danger,
the fear that if this tender association continued, he would end in
offering her a calamity quite as impossible as that which had
happened--the love of a man who was in all probability older than
her father! The hurt was no less intensive because it was so
ridiculous.

He would talk to Spurlock, but from the bench; as a judge, not as a
chagrined lover. He dropped the key on the counterpane.

"If I could only make you realize what you have done," he said,
lamely.

"I know exactly what I have done," replied Spurlock. "She is my
lawful wife."

"I should have opened that letter in the beginning," said the
doctor. "But I happen to be an honest man myself. Had you died, I
should have fully obeyed the instructions on that envelope. You
will make her suffer."

"For every hurt she has, I shall have two. I did not lay any traps
for her. I asked her to marry me, and she consented."

"Ah, yes; that's all very well. But when she learns that you are a
fugitive from justice...."

"What proof have you that I am?"--was the return bolt.

"A knowledge of the ways of men. I don't know what you have done; I
don't want to know now. But God will punish you for what you have
done this day."

"As for that, I don't say. But I shall take care of Ruth, work for
her and fight for her." A prophecy which was to be fulfilled in a
singular way. "Given a chance, I can make bread and butter. I'm no
mollycoddle. I have only one question to ask you."

"And what might that be?"

"Will McClintock take us both?"

"You took that chance. There has never been a white woman at
McClintock's."

He paused, and not without malice. He was human. The pause
lengthened, and he had the satisfaction of seeing despair melt the
set mockery of Spurlock's mouth.

"You begin to have doubts, eh? A handful of money between you, and
nothing else. There are only a few jobs over here for a man of your
type; and even these are more or less hopeless if you haven't
trained mechanical ability." Then he became merciful. "But
McClintock agrees to take you both--because he's as big a fool as I
am. But I give you this warning, and let it sink in. You will be
under the eye of the best friend I have; and if you do not treat
that child for what she is--an innocent angel--I promise to hunt
you across the wide world and kill you with bare hands."

Spurlock's glance shot up, flaming again. "And on my part, I shall
not lift a hand to defend myself."

"I wish I could have foreseen."

"That is to say, you wish you had let me die?"

"That was the thought."

This frankness rather subdued Spurlock. His shoulders relaxed and
his gaze wavered. "Perhaps that would have been best."

"But what, in God's name, possessed you? You have already wrecked
your own life and now you've wrecked hers. She doesn't love you;
she hasn't the least idea what it means beyond what she has read in
novels. The world isn't real yet; she hasn't comparisons by which
to govern her acts. I am a physician first, which gives the man in
me a secondary part. You have just passed through rather a severe
physical struggle; just as previously to your collapse you had gone
through some terrific mental strain. Your mind is still subtly
sick. The man in me would like to break every bone in your body,
but the physician understands that you don't actually realize what
you have done. But in a little while you will awake; and if there
is a spark of manhood in you, you will be horrified at this day's
work."

Spurlock closed his eyes. Expiation. He felt the first sting of the
whip. But there was no feeling of remorse; there was only the
sensation of exaltation.

"If you two loved each other," went on the doctor, "there would be
something to stand on--a reason why for this madness. I can fairly
understand Ruth; but you...!"

"Have you ever been so lonely that the soul of you cried in
anguish? Twenty-four hours a day to think in, alone?... Perhaps I
did not want to go mad from loneliness. I will tell you this much,
because you have been kind. It is true that I do not love Ruth; but
I swear to you, before the God of my fathers, that she shall never
know it!"

"I'll be getting along." The doctor ran his fingers through his
hair, despairingly. "A hell of a muddle! But all the talk in the
world can't undo it. I'll put you aboard _The Tigress_ to-morrow
after sundown. But remember my warning, and play the game!"

Spurlock closed his eyes again. The doctor turned quickly and made
for the door, which he opened and shut gently because he was
assured that Ruth was listening across the hall for any sign of
violence. He had nothing more to say either to her or to Spurlock.
All the king's horses and all the king's men could not undo what
was done; nor kill the strange exquisite flower that had grown up
in his own lonely heart.

Opals. He wondered if, after all, McClintock wasn't nearest the
truth, that Ruth was one of those unfortunate yet innocent women
who make havoc with the hearts of men.

Marriage!--and no woman by to tell the child what it was! The
shocks and disillusions she would have to meet unsuspectingly--and
bitterly. Unless there was some real metal in the young fool, some
hidden strength with which to breast the current, Ruth would become
a millstone around his neck and soon he would become to her an
object of pity and contempt.

There was once a philanthropist who dressed with shameful
shabbiness and carried pearls in his pocket. The picture might
easily apply to _The Tigress_: outwardly disreputable, but richly
and comfortably appointed below. The flush deck was without wells.
The wheel and the navigating instruments were sternward, under a
spread of heavy canvas, a protection against rain and sun. Amidship
there was also canvas, and like that over the wheel, drab and
dirty.

The dining saloon was done in mahogany and sandalwood, with eight
cabins, four to port and four to starboard. The bed-and table-linen
were of the finest texture. From the centre of the ceiling hung a
replica of the temple lamp in the Taj Mahal. The odour of coconut
prevailed, delicately but abidingly; for, save for the occasioned
pleasure junket, _The Tigress_ was a copra carrier, shell and fibre.

McClintock's was a plantation of ten thousand palms, yielding him
annually about half a million nuts. Natives brought him an equal
amount from the neighbouring islands. As the palm bears nuts
perennially, there were always coconut-laden proas making the
beach. Thus, McClintock carried to Copeley's press about half a
million pounds of copra. There was a very substantial profit in the
transaction, for he paid the natives in commodities--coloured
cotton cloths, pipes and tobacco, guns and ammunition, household
utensils, cutlery and glass gewgaws. It was perfectly legitimate.
Money was not necessary; indeed, it would have embarrassed all
concerned.. A native sold his supply of nuts in exchange for cloth,
tobacco and so forth. In the South Seas, money is the eliminated
middleman.

Where the islands are grouped, men discard the use of geographical
names and simply refer to "McClintock's" or "Copeley's," to the
logical dictator of this or that island.

At sundown Spurlock was brought aboard and put into cabin 2, while
Ruth was assigned to cabin 4, adjoining. From the Sha-mien to the
yacht, Spurlock had uttered no word; though, even in the
semi-darkness, no gesture or word of Ruth's escaped him.

Now that she was his, to make or mar, she presented an
extraordinary fascination. She had suddenly become as the jewels of
the Madonna, as the idol's eye, infinitely beyond his reach,
sacred. He could not pull her soul apart now to satisfy that queer
absorbing, delving thing which was his literary curiosity; he had
put her outside that circle. His lawful wife; but nothing more;
beyond that she was only an idea, a trust.

An incredible road he had elected to travel; he granted that it was
incredible; and along this road somewhere would be Desire. There
were menacing possibilities; the thought of them set him a-tremble.
What would happen when confronted by the actual? He was young; she
was also young and physically beautiful--his lawful wife. He had
put himself before the threshold of damnation; for Ruth was now a
vestal in the temple. Such was the condition of his mind that the
danger exhilarated rather than depressed him. Here would be the
true test of his strength. Upon this island whither he was bound
there would be no diversions, breathing spells; the battle would be
constant.

All at once it came to him what a fool he was to worry over this
phase which was wholly suppositional. He did not love Ruth. They
would be partners only in loneliness. He would provide the
necessities of life and protect her. He would teach her all he knew
of life so that if the Hand should ever reach his shoulder, she
would be able to defend herself. He was always anticipating,
stepping into the future, torturing himself with non-existent
troubles. These cogitations were interrupted by the entrance of the
doctor.

"Good-bye, young man; and good luck."

"You are offering your hand to me?"

"Without reservations." The doctor gave Spurlock's hand a friendly
pressure. "Buck up! While there's life there's hope. Play fair with
her. You don't know what you have got; I do. Let her have her own
way in all things, for she will always be just."

Spurlock turned aside his head as he replied: "Words are sometimes
useless things. I might utter a million, and still I doubt if I
could make you understand."

"Probably not. The thing is done. The main idea now is of the
future. You will have lots of time on your hands. Get out your pad
and pencil. Go to it. Ruth will be a gold mine for a man of your
peculiar bent."

"You read those yarns?" Spurlock's head came about, and there was
eagerness in his eyes. "Rot, weren't they?"

"No. You have the gift of words, but you haven't started to create
yet. Go to it; and the best of luck!"

He went out. This farewell had been particularly distasteful to
him. There was still in his heart that fierce anger which demands
physical expression; but he had to consider Ruth in all phases. He
proceeded to the deck, where Ruth and McClintock were waiting for
him by the ladder. He handed Ruth a letter.

"What is this?" she wanted to know.

"A hundred dollars which was left from your husband's money."

"Would you be angry if I offered it to you?"

"Very. Don't worry about me."

"You are the kindest man I have ever known," said Ruth, unashamed
of her tears. "I have hurt you because I would not trust you. It is
useless to talk. I could never make you understand."

Almost the identical words of the boy. "Will you write," asked the
doctor, "and tell me how you are getting along?"

"Oh, yes!"

"The last advice I can give you is this: excite his imagination;
get him started with his writing. Remember, some day you and I are
going to have that book." He patted her hand. "Good-bye, Mac. Don't
forget to cut out all effervescent water. If you will have your
peg, take it with plain water. You'll be along next spring?"

"If the old tub will float. I'll watch over these infants, if
that's your worry. Good-bye."

The doctor went down the side to the waiting sampan, which at once
set out for the Sha-mien. Through a blur of tears Ruth followed the
rocking light until it vanished. One more passer-by; and always
would she remember his patience and tenderness and disinterestedness.
She was quite assured that she would never see him again.

"Yon's a dear man," said McClintock. His natal burr was always in
evidence when he was sentimentally affected. He knocked his pipe on
the teak rail. "Took a great fancy to you. Wants me to look out for
you a bit. I take it, down where we're going will be nothing new to
you. But I've stacks of books and a grand piano-player."

"Piano-player? Do you mean someone who plays for you?"

"No, no; one of those mechanical things you play with your feet.
Plays Beethoven, Rubenstein and all those chaps. I'm a bit daffy
about music."

"That sounds funny ... to play it with your feet!"

McClintock laughed. "It's a pump, like an organ."

"Oh, I see. What a wonderful world it is!" Music. She shuddered.

"Ay. Well, I'll be getting this tub under way."

Ruth walked to the companion. It was one of those old sliding trap
affairs, narrow and steep of descent. She went down, feeling rather
than seeing the way. The door of cabin 2 was open. Someone had
thoughtfully wrapped a bit of tissue paper round the electric bulb.

She did not enter the cabin at once, but paused on the threshold
and stared at the silent, recumbent figure in the bunk. In the
subdued light she could not tell whether he was asleep or awake.
Never again to be alone! To fit herself into this man's life as a
hand into a glove; to use all her skill to force him into the
position of depending upon her utterly; to be the spark to the
divine fire! He should have his book, even if it had to be written
with her heart's blood.

What she did not know, and what she was never to know, was that the
divine fire was hers.

"Ruth?" he called.

She entered and approached the bunk. "I thought you were asleep. Is
there anything you want?" She laid her hand on his forehead, and
found it without fever. She had worried in fear that the excitement
would be too much for him.

"Call me Hoddy. That is what my mother used to call me."

"Hoddy," she repeated. "I shall like to call you that. But now you
must be quiet; there's been too much excitement. Knock on the
partition if you want anything during the might. I awaken easily.
Good night!" She pressed his hand and went out.

For a long time he stared at the empty doorway. He heard the
panting of the donkey-engine, then the slithering of the anchor
chains. Presently he felt motion. He chuckled. The vast ironic
humour of it: he was starting on his honeymoon!

CHAPTER XIX

Meanwhile the doctor, upon returning to his office, found Ah Cum in
the waiting room. "Why, hello, Ah Cum! What's the trouble?"

Ah Cum took his hands from his sleeves. "I should like to know
where Mr. Spurlock has gone."

"Did he owe you money?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then why do you wish to know?"

Ah Cum pondered. "I have a client who is very much interested in
Mr. Spurlock. He was here shortly after the young man was taken
ill."

"Ah. What was this man?"

"A detective from the States."

"Why didn't he arrest Mr. Spurlock then?"

"I imagine that Mr. O'Higgins is rather a kindly man. He couldn't
have taken Mr. Spurlock back to Hong-Kong with him, so he
considered it would be needless to give an additional shock. He
asked me to watch Mr. Spurlock's movements and report progress. He
admitted that it would bore him to dally here in Canton, with the
pleasures of Hong-Kong so close."

The doctor caught the irony, and he warmed a little. "I'm afraid I
must decline to tell you. Do you know what Spurlock has done?"

"Mr. O'Higgins did not confide in me. But he told me this much,
that no matter how far Mr. Spurlock went, it would not be far
enough."

A detective. The doctor paced the room half a dozen times. How
easily an evil thought could penetrate a normally decent mind! All
he had to do was to disclose Spurlock's destination, and in a few
months Ruth would be free. For it was but logical that she would
seek a divorce on the ground that she had unknowingly married a
fugitive from justice. McClintock would be on hand to tell her how
and where to obtain this freedom. He stopped abruptly before the
apparently incurious Chinaman.

"Your detective has been remiss in his duty; let him suffer for
it."

"Personally, I am neutral," said Ah Cum. "I wish merely to come out
of this bargain honourably. It would make the young wife unhappy."

"Very."

"There was a yacht in the river?"

"I have nothing to say."

"By the name of _The Tigress_?"

The doctor smiled, but shook his head. He sent a speculative glance
at the immobile yellow face. Was Ah Cum offering him an opportunity
to warn Spurlock? But should he warn the boy? Why not let him
imagine himself secure? The thunderbolt would be launched soon
enough.

"I haven't a word to say, Ah Cum, not a word."

"Then I wish you good night."

Ah Cum went directly to the telegraph office, and his message was
devoted particularly to a description of _The Tigress_. Spurlock
had been taken aboard that yacht with the Kanaka crew, because _The
Tigress_ was the only ship marked for departure that night. Ah Cum
was not a sailor, but he knew his water-front. One of his chair
coolies had witnessed the transportation of Spurlock by stretcher
to the sampan in the canal. There were three other ships at anchor;
but as two would be making Shanghai and one rounding to Singapore
two days hence, it was logically certain that no fugitive would
seek haven in one of these.

But whither _The Tigress_ was bound or who the owner was lay beyond
the reach of Ah Cum's deductions. He did not particularly care. It
was enough that Spurlock had been taken aboard _The Tigress_.

He wisely refrained from questioning the manager of the Victoria.
He feared to antagonize that distinguished person. The Victoria was
Ah Cum's bread and butter.

The telegram dispatched, his obligation cancelled, Ah Cum proceeded
homeward, chuckling occasionally. The Yale spirit!

James Boyle O'Higgins was, as the saying goes, somewhat out of
luck. Ah Cum's wire reached the Hong-Kong Hotel promptly enough;
but O'Higgins was on board a United States cruiser, witnessing a
bout between a British sailor and a sergeant in the U.S. Marines.
It was a capital diversion; and as usual the Leatherneck bested the
Britisher, in seven rounds. O'Higgins returned to town and made a
night of it, nothing very wild, nothing very desperate. A modest
drinking bout which had its windup in a fan-tan house over in
Kowloon, where O'Higgins tussled with varying fortune until five in
the morning.

When he was given the telegram he flew to the Praya, engaged the
fast motor-boat he had previously bespoken against the need, and
started for the Macao Passage, with the vague hope of speaking _The
Tigress_. He hung round those broad waters from noon until three
and realized that he had embarked upon a wild-goose chase. Still,
his conscience was partly satisfied. He made Hong-Kong at dusk:
wet, hungry, and a bit groggy for the want of sleep; but he was in
no wise discouraged. The girl was in the game now, and that
narrowed the circle.

The following morning found him in the doctor's waiting room, a
black cigar turning unlighted in his teeth. When the doctor came
in--he had just finished his breakfast--O'Higgins rose and
presented his card. Upon reading the name, the doctor's eyebrows
went up.

"I rather fancy, as you Britishers say, that you know the nature of
my visit?"

"I'm an American."

"Fine!" said O'Higgins, jovially. "We won't have any trouble
understanding each other; same language. There's nothing on the
card to indicate it, but I'm a detective."

O'Higgins threw out his chest, gave it a pat, and smiled. This
smile warned the doctor not to underestimate the man. O'Higgins was
all that the doctor had imagined a detective to be: a bulky
policeman in civilian clothes. The blue jowl, the fat-lidded
eyes--now merry, now alert, now tungsten hard--the bullet head, the
pudgy fingers and the square-toed shoes were all in conformation
with the doctor's olden mental picture.

"Yes; I know I look it," said O'Higgins, amiably.

The doctor laughed. But he sobered instantly as he recollected that
O'Higgins had found Spurlock once. Journeying blindly half way
across the world, this man had found his quarry.

"I never wear false whiskers," went on O'Higgins. "The only
disguise I ever put on is a dress-suit, and I look as natural as a
pig at a Mahomedan dinner." O'Higgins was disarming the doctor.
"Won't you sit down?"

"I beg your pardon! Come into the consultation office"; and the
doctor led the way. "What is it you want of me?"

"All you know about this young fellow Spurlock."

"What has he done?"

"He has just naturally peeved his Uncle Sam. Now, you know where he
is bound."

"Did Ah Cum advise you?"

"He did pretty well for a Chinaman. But that's his American
education. Now, it won't do a bit of good to warn Spurlock. He
carries with him something that will mark him anywhere--the girl.
Say, that girl fooled me at first glance. You see, we guys bump up
against so much of the seamy side that we look upon everybody as
guilty until proved innocent, which is hind-side-to. The second
look told me I was wrong."

"I'm going to put one question," interrupted the doctor. "Was there
any other woman back there in the States?"

"Nary a female. Oh, they are married fast. What are you going to
tell me?"

"Nothing." But the doctor softened the refusal by smiling.

"For the sake of the girl. Well, I don't blame you on that ground.
If the boy was legging it alone...."

"I'm a doctor. I took him out of the hands of death. Unless he has
killed someone. I sha'n't utter a word."

"Killed someone?" O'Higgins laughed. "He wouldn't hurt a rabbit."

"You won't tell me what he has done?"

"If you'll tell me where he's heading."

"You can give me a little of his history, can't you? Something
about his people?"

"Oh, his folks were all right. His father and mother are gone now.
Rich folks, once. The boy had all kinds of opportunity; but it's
the old story of father making it too easy. It's always hard work
for a rich man's son to stand alone. Then you won't tell me where
he's going?"

"I will tell you six months from now."

"Prolonging the misery. Unless he deserts the girl, he won't be so
hard to find as formerly. You see, it's like this. The boss says to
me: 'Higg, here's a guy we want back. He's down in Patagonia
somewhere.' So I go to Patagonia. I know South America and Canada
like the lines in my hand. This is my first venture over here. The
point is, I know all the tricks in finding a man. Sure, I lose one
occasionally--if he stays in New York. But if he starts a long jog,
his name is Dennis. You may not know it, but it's easier to find a
guy that's gone far than it is when he lays dogo in little old New
York."

"You had Spurlock once."

O'Higgins grinned. "Women are always balling up and muddling clean
cases. If this girl hadn't busted into the game, Spurlock would
still be at the hotel."

The doctor was forced to admit the truth of this. Ruth out of the
picture, he wouldn't have concerned himself so eagerly in regard to
Spurlock's departure.

"I'm sorry, Mr. O'Higgins, but I decline to give you the least
information."

The detective ruefully inspected the scarlet band on his perfecto.
"And I'll bet a doughnut that boy in his soul is crazy to have it
over with. Well-born, well-educated; those are the lads that pay in
full."

"You're a philosopher, too. I'll tell you something. One of the
reasons why I decline to talk is this: that boy's punishment will
be enough."

"That's not my game. They order me to get my man, and I get him.
There ends my duty. What they do with him afterward is off my
ticket, no concern of James Boyle; they can lock him up or let him
go. Say, how about this Ah Cum: is he honest?"

"As the day is long."

"Didn't know but what I'd been out-bid. I offered him a hundred to
watch Spurlock. Fifty in advance. This morning I met him at the
dock, and he wouldn't take the other fifty. A queer nut. Imagine
any one on this side refusing fifty bucks! Well, I'll be toddling
along. Don't feel fussed upon my account. I get your side all
right. H'm!"

Over the desk, on the wall, was a map of the South Pacific
archipelagoes, embossed by a number of little circles drawn in red
ink. O'Higgins eyed it thoughtfully.

"That's your hunting ground," said the doctor.

"It's a whale of a place. Ten thousand islands, and each one good
for a night's rest. Why, that boy could hide for thirty
years--without the girl. She's my meal-ticket. What are those little
red circles?" O'Higgins asked, rising and inspecting the map. A film
of dust lay upon it; the ink marks were ancient. For a moment
O'Higgins had hoped that the ink applications would be recent.
"Been to those places?"

"No. Years ago I marked out an intinerary for myself; but the trip
never materialized. Too busy."

"That's the way it goes. Well, I'll take myself off. But if I were
you, I shouldn't warn Spurlock. Let him have his honeymoon. So
long."

For a long time after O'Higgins had gone the doctor rocked in his
swivel chair, his glance directed at the map. In all his life he
had never realized a dream; but the thought had never before hurt
him. The Dawn Pearl. It did not seem quite fair. He had plugged
along, if not happy, at least with sound philosophy. And then this
girl had to sweep into and out of his life! He recalled
McClintock's comment about Spurlock being the kind that fell soft.
Even this man-hunting machine was willing to grant the boy his
honeymoon.

Meantime, O'Higgins wended his way to the Victoria, mulling over
this and that phase, all matters little and big that bore upon the
chase. Mac's. In one of the little red circles the doctor had
traced that abbreviation. That could signify nothing except that
the doctor had a friend down there somewhere, on an island in one
of those archipelagoes. But the sheer immensity of the tract! James
Boyle was certainly up against it, hard. One chance in a thousand,
and that would be the girl. She wouldn't be able to pass by
anywhere without folks turning their heads.

Of course he hadn't played the game wisely. But what the deuce! He
was human; he was a machine only when on the hunt. He had found
Spurlock. In his condition the boy apparently had been as safe as
in the lock-up. Why shouldn't James Boyle pinch out a little fun
while waiting? How was he to anticipate the girl and the sea-tramp
called _The Tigress_? Something that wasn't in the play at all but
had walked out of the scenery like the historical black cat?

"I'll have to punish a lot of tobacco to get the kinks out of this.
Sure Mike!"

At the hotel he wrote a long letter to his chief, explaining every
detail of the fizzle. Later he dispatched a cable announcing the
escape and the sending of the letter. When he returned to Hong-Kong,
there was a reply to his cable:

"Hang on. Find that boy."

Some order. South America was big; but ten thousand islands,
scattered all over the biggest ocean on the map! Nearly all of them
clear of the ship lanes and beaten tracks! The best thing he could
do would be to call up the Quai d'Orsay and turn over the job to
Lecocq. Only a book detective could dope this out.

What he needed most in this hour was a bottle of American rye-whisky
and a friendly American bar-keep to talk to. He regretted now that
in his idle hours he hadn't hunted up one against the rainy day. The
barmaids had too strongly appealed to his sense of novelty. So he
marched into the street, primarily bent upon making the favourable
discovery. If there was a Yankee bar-keep in Hong-Kong, James Boyle
would soon locate him. No blowzy barmaids for him to-day: an
American bar-keep to whom he could tell his troubles and receive the
proper meed of sympathy.

The sunshine was brilliant, the air mild. The hotel on the Peak had
the aspect of a fairy castle. The streets were full of colour.
O'Higgins wandered into this street and that, studying the signs
and resenting the Britisher's wariness in using too much tin and
paint. This niggardliness compelled him to cross and recross
streets.

Suddenly he came to a stop, his mouth agape.

"Solid ivory!" he said aloud; "solid from dome to neck! That's
James Boyle in the family group. And if I hadn't been thirsty, that
poor boob would have made a sure getaway and left James Boyle high
and dry among the moth-balls! Oh, the old dome works once every so
often. Fancy, as they say hereabouts!"

What had aroused this open-air monologue was a small tin sign in a
window. Marine Insurance. Here was a hole as wide as a church-door.
What could be simpler than, with a set of inquiries relative to a
South Sea tramp registered as _The Tigress_, to make a tour of all
the marine insurance companies in Hong-Kong? O'Higgins proceeded to
put the idea into action; and by noon he had in his possession a
good working history of the owner of _The Tigress_ and the exact
latitude and longitude of his island.

He cabled to New York: "Probable destination known."

"Make it positive," was the brisk reply.

O'Higgins made it positive; but it required five weeks of broken
voyages: with dilapidated hotels, poor food, poor tobacco, and
evil-smelling tramps. It took a deal of thought to cast a
comprehensive cable, for it had to include where Spurlock was, what
he was doing, and the fact that O'Higgins's letter of credit would
not now carry him and Spurlock to San Francisco. The reply he
received this time put him into a state of continuous bewilderment.

"Good work. Come home alone."

CHAPTER XX

To Spurlock it seemed as if a great iron door had swung in behind
him, shutting out the old world. He was safe, out of the beaten
track, at last really comparable to the needle in the haystack. The
terrific mental tension of the past few months--that had held his
bodily nourishment in a kind of strangulation--became as a dream;
and now his vitals responded rapidly to food and air. On the second
day out he was helped to a steamer-chair on deck; on the third day,
his arm across Ruth's shoulder, he walked from his chair to the
foremast and back. The will to live had returned.

For five days _The Tigress_ chugged her way across the burnished
South China, grumpily, as if she resented this meddling with her
destiny. She had been built for canvas and oil-lamps, and this new
thingumajig that kept her nose snoring at eight knots when normally
she was able to boil along at ten, and these unblinking things they
called lamps (that neither smoked nor smelled), irked and
threatened to ruin her temper.

On the sixth day, however, they made the strong southwest trade,
and broke out the canvas, stout if dirty; and _The Tigress_
answered as a bird released. Taking the wind was her business in
life. She creaked, groaned, and rattled; but that was only her way
of yawning when she awoke.

The sun-canvas was stowed; and Spurlock's chair was set forward the
foremast, where the bulging jib cast a sliding blue shadow over
him. Rather a hazardous spot for a convalescent, and McClintock had
been doubtful at first; but Spurlock declared that he was a good
sailor, which was true. He loved the sea, and could give a good
account of himself in any weather. And this was an adventure of
which he had dreamed from boyhood: aboard a windjammer on the South
Seas.

There were mysterious sounds, all of them musical. There were swift
actions, too: a Kanaka crawled out upon the bowsprit to make taut a
slack stay, while two others with pulley-blocks swarmed aloft.
Occasionally the canvas snapped as the wind veered slightly. The
sea was no longer rolling brass; it was bluer than anything he had
ever seen. Every so often a wall of water, thin and jade-coloured,
would rise up over the port bow, hesitate, and fall smacking
amidships. Once the ship faltered, and the tip of this jade wall
broke into a million gems and splashed him liberally. Ruth,
standing by, heard his true laughter for the first time.

This laughter released something that had been striving for
expression--her own natural buoyancy. She became as _The Tigress_,
a free thing. She dropped beside the chair, sat cross-legged, and
laughed at the futile jade-coloured wall. There was no past, no
future, only this exhilarating present. Yesterday!--who cared?
To-morrow!--who knew?

"Porpoise," she said, touching his hand.

"Fox-terriers of the sea; friends with every ship that comes along.
Funny codgers, aren't they?" he said.

"When you are stronger we'll go up to the cutwater and watch them
from there."

"I have . . . from many ships."

A shadow, which was not cast by the jib, fell upon them both. His
voice had changed, the joy had gone out of it; and she understood
that something from the past had rolled up to spoil this hour. But
she did not know what he knew, that it would always be rolling up,
enlivened by suggestion, no matter how trifling.

What had actually beaten him was not to have known if someone had
picked up his trail. The acid of this incertitude had disintegrated
his nerve; and in Canton had come the smash. But that was all over.
Nobody could possibly find him now. The doctor would never betray
him. He might spend the rest of his days at McClintock's in perfect
security.

McClintock, coming from below, saw them and went forward. "Well,
how goes it?" he asked.

"Thank you, sir," said Spurlock, holding out his hand.

McClintock, without comment, accepted the hand. He rather liked the
"sir"; it signified both gratefulness and the chastened spirit.

"And I want to thank you, too," supplemented Ruth.

"Tut, tut! Don't exaggerate. I needed a man the worst kind of way--a
man I could keep for at least six months. What do you think of the
old tub?"

"She's wonderful!" cried Ruth. "I love her already. I had no idea
she could go so fast."

"Know anything about ships?"

"This kind. I have seen many of them. Once a sick sailor drew three
pictures for me and set down every stay and brace and
sail--square-rigger, schooner, and sloop. But this is the first time
I ever sailed on any one of the three. And I find I can't tell one
stay from another!"

McClintock laughed. "You can't go to sea with a book of rules. _The
Tigress_ is second-hand, built for coast-trade. There used to be an
after deckhouse and a shallow well for the wheel; but I changed