Читать книгу The Breath of the Gods - Sidney McCall - Страница 9

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The first days of any voyage are admirable in proportion as little, or nothing, is said of them. In this, as in other phases of human intercourse, delicacy lies in restraint rather than in eloquence. Thus is the bloom of society preserved.

Mr. Dodge, the self-confident, the experienced, the ubiquitous, was first to "show up." The outer reefs of the California coast do not tend toward placidity. Even Dodge did not care to count the hours since he had begun to feel "sleepy" and had sought his cabin.

Mr. Todd next met the sun. To be more accurate, it was a fog, where only a small bright spot, rubbed as in the centre of a tarnished tray, indicated our chief luminary. Todd's cap was pulled very low, his ulster collar very high. His hands disappeared utterly into large pockets. He walked with the jerky directness of a marionette toward the smoking-room.

On the third day, when the sun actually shone and the pewter sky was undergoing a gradual transformation into blue enamel, Mr. Todd was able to sit on deck—he still remained noticeably near the smoking-room—and to enjoy unprintable yarns from fellow-smokers. Missionary children began to gambol around the promenade deck, and over the feet of swathed and flaccid mortals, lately exhumed, all with the blinking regard of insects suddenly disclosed beneath a garden stone. Dodge, for a wonder, was not in sight. Mr. Todd had his back toward the main-deck exit from the salon, when one of the group about him thumped a knee, stared up, crying, "By G—, look at that!" and called loudly upon his Maker to witness that the sight was fair.

Out to the deck had blown a golden apparition—a tall, slim girl with yellow hair crushed under a wide and most unsailor-like hat of yellow sea-poppies. Her skirts and the rest of her were silken browns and yellows. She made straight for the group, rustling like a small eddy in a heap of autumn-leaves. Todd turned a few inches. At the expression on his face a third convive nudged the speaker. "Oh, er—beg ten thousand pardons—didn't have an idea—" mumbled the crimson one.

"Neither did I," said Todd, enigmatically, as he rose.

"Oh, dearest of dads," they heard a fresh voice cry. "Now isn't this a world with the top off? I feel like a bunk caterpillar turned into a butterfly."

Pierre followed his three emancipated comrades, immediately after "tiffin," as the midday meal hereafter must be called. He was, as usual, immaculate in attire, but bore an air of citric melancholy.

Next arose, in all her might, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd. In her aggressive costume of starched piqué, fortified by gold lorgnettes and an air carefully adapted from certain acknowledged "grandes dames" of Washington, she took immediate possession of the Captain, the best deck chair, and the passenger list. As wife of a senator and lady of the new American minister to Japan, she was accepted at once, without demur, reigning Empress of the voyage.

Sportive infants, oblivious of comfortably extended limbs of lesser mortals, skirted those of Mrs. Todd. Silent Chinese "boys," dispensing beef-tea and gruel, swung pigtails aside from her austere garments.

Of the party Yuki alone now abode in the mysterious seclusion of her stateroom.

Before sunset, on that third afternoon, the sea, to use the Captain's expression, quieted into a "bloomin' mill-pond." White birds fluttered incessantly about the stern of the ship, sometimes sinking to the waves for an unstable rest, or rising to visit, in one great silver swoop, the startled and delighted passenger deck.

Pierre found a chair beside his chaperon. He moved it a confidential three inches nearer before asking, "Will she not be able to come up sometime before to-morrow? This is perfect."

"She has commissioned me to say that she will try to make the effort this evening, after our dinner; that is, if—" here she shook a playful finger—"if I will play propriety, and any kindly disposed person could be found to assist her upstairs."

"Ah! I'll go down now, and take seat upon her doormat," cried Pierre, in his excitement.

"The Chinese coolie might spill chicken broth upon you."

The day waned slowly. Passengers were beginning already their postprandial walks. Mrs. Todd nodded patronizingly to one and then to another.

"Madame," began Pierre, with his caressing look, "you have been almost as a mother—a good, indulgent mother—to me in that big land of yours. You will continue to be my very good friend in Japan, will you not?"

"Why, silly boy, of course I will," she cried. "Have not I always been your friend and Yuki's—even to the point of what Cyrus called 'entangling alliances'?"

"It is because of its preciousness that I want to hear you say it, dear Mrs. Todd. After all, I am ignorant of Japan, and of what social phantoms Yuki and I may have to fight. But with your championship, I am strong, invincible!" He gave her fat hand just the most delicate of pressures. It might have been the touch of a devoted son; it might, had Mrs. Todd been twenty years younger, have been—well, almost anything. His dark, impassioned eyes, the color of new-opened violets, hung on her kindly face.

If fault could be found with Pierre, it would be in excess of beauty. From the old blood of France he had received refinement, poise, delicacy—the throbbing of purple veins in temples as satin-smooth as young leaves, and thin nostrils that shivered at every passing gust of emotion. From the more barbaric, vivid Russian mother had come depth of coloring, the flash of sudden animation, deep blue in the eyes, and gold in the hair. Yet with all its fairness the face was not effeminate. One could think of it, without offence, in the armor of a young crusader, or even behind the mediæval visor of a robber-baron. There might be a hint of cruelty behind the wet crimson of the perfect mouth. To Yuki that face was the epitome of all earthly beauty. Before it, the artist in her knelt, in adoration.

Shortly after twilight came the reverberating clamor of the first dinner-gong. Mrs. Todd and her feminine satellites had agreed to "dress." Mrs. Todd had never made acquaintance with a décolleté gown until her entrance into Washington, not so many years before. Now she was wont to declare loudly that she could not really enjoy her evening meal in covered shoulders—a statement which always brought the twinkles to Todd's eyes. He openly loathed his "tombstone shirt-front;" but Gwendolen, of a later and more favored generation, wore her pretty low-cut frocks as unconsciously as a flower wears its sheath.

Pierre sat through the interminable courses, scarcely knowing what he ate or to whom he spoke. His thoughts were all with Yuki. He was to see her again after three endless days! The little cool, slim palm would lie, perhaps, in his. He would hear her voice, as different from these chattering table women all around him as is the sound of running water to the whirr of machines. The past ten days of journeying—though indeed they had not been for a moment entirely alone—left a delicious aroma of familiarity, almost of married friendship. What hours the future was to hold for them in Japan, in Europe, in India!

Mrs. Todd's half-teasing voice drew him back from the dear reverie. "Come, Mister Le Beau, dinner is over at last. I noticed that you ate nothing. The Captain has been telling us the most delightful jokes. But we must not forget our promise to Miss Onda. Gwendolen, dear, will you go on deck and see that a chair is made ready for the poor child?" The speaker had been rising ponderously. She turned again to the Captain. "These Japanese are always wretched sailors, I am told."

"No good, any of them!" corroborated the Captain, with emphasis. "The sight of a floral anchor at a landlubber's funeral is enough to make them ill."

"I wonder how it will be with their admirals before the Russian navy," mused Todd, with pensive eyes on a blue-gowned Chinese steward.

"It wouldn't matter either way," sneered the Captain. "No fight is going to come off! I've known these Yokohama Japs for seventeen years, Mr. Todd. A bad lot! They are just trying a game of bluff borrowed from—no offence, gentlemen—from America." The Captain was a Liverpool Englishman.

"Just so!" grinned Dodge, "the kind of bluff that works—recipe handed down by one G. Washington."

Pierre and Mrs. Todd approached Yuki's cabin. She heard them, and tottered to the entrance of the tiny passage. Her face shone ghastly white above the square black collar of her adzuma-coat. Pierre instantly drew her arm within his own. She clung to him helplessly for an instant, then, with an obvious effort, rallied and stood erect.

"There, there, now, keep to Pierre's arm," encouraged Mrs. Todd, with the smile of a patron deity. "If you'll promise to be good, I'll go ahead and not look around." She preceded them slowly along the passage. Her décolleté back loomed, in the dim light, like the half of a large, round cheese.

Yuki, once safely on deck, tucked lovingly among soft rugs and pillows by Gwendolen, found little indeed to say. Mrs. Todd gave orders, before sweeping off to her game of bridge whist, that Yuki must not be teased into talking, but must lie still, and let the night air and the breeze refresh her. Pierre, of course, remained by her side. He cared little though the whole ship knew that he loved the Japanese girl and longed to make her his wife. Dodge and Gwendolen had affairs of their own to settle, and disappeared around the other side. Gradually the deck was deserted by all but Pierre and his companion. He secured a small hand in his own. The girl was too languid, or perhaps too blissful, to demur.

"Oh, to be seasick is most unpleasantest thing of all!" she whispered once, with a short but very genuine shudder. "I shall never cross back on this water—never, never! The little bed downstairs it seem like a grave, and one wish hard that it was truly a grave."

After another long silence, broken only by whispered sentences from Pierre, she pointed to a constellation. "How nice and kind the stars are to come out here with us, so far from home! That cluster is exactly the same one I used to watch from my little room at school. When I see it in Japan, and count the stars to be sure all have followed, it will be stranger feeling yet."

"Darling," said Pierre, "sometime we are to carry that little shining group the whole way round the world with us—when you are my wife."

The great ship rose softly and sank again, as if breathing. The stars stared in, unwinking. Yuki's face was deepening in sweet content. Every shiver of the engine, every angry hurtling of the insulted waters, thrust them consciously nearer to Japan.

Roughening waves, toward the night of the fourth day, indicated, according to the Captain, approach to the Hawaiian Islands. He added, "If any one is keen enough on it to get up at daybreak, he will see the first outlying peaks."

Todd, in a passion of romantic interest that was part of the whole marvellous epic, climbed to the deck before dawn. The stars, he fancied, looked coldly upon him, as if they resented his presence at their coming defeat. He leaned far over, watching waves that lapped the sides of the ship in a strange rhythm. Under the brightening day he stared across an ocean apparently as eternal and infinite as space, that stretched, he knew, north and south beyond him, twelve thousand miles of unbroken liquid desert from pole to pole. And yet through the centuries, this perilous waste had been crossed from oasis to island oasis by the frail canoes of men;—dark Polynesian painted savages with marvellous powers of carving and inlaying, who had left traces of their coming from New Zealand to Alaska, and through the Philippines to Japan. He pictured the advent of that first dusky Ulysses who, in feathered armor and a Greek helmet carved from a cinnamon-tree, had here, ages before, terminated his thousand-mile wanderings from a forgotten South. All this had now become a new world for Todd's own light-haired Saxon race to fall heir to, stepping-stones in its inevitable stride to the teeming coasts of Asia.

Yuki, too, in such excitement that she could barely stop to dress, had been staring out of the port-hole of her stateroom since an early hour. If one of the great birds swooping incessantly along the sides of the ship had paused to look, he would have seen a small face, white as himself, fitted into the round brass frame. She was there before dawn had quickened under the sea. The mystery and the first unspeakable shiver of a newly created day had been hers. "'And God moved upon the face of the waters,'" whispered reverent Oriental lips. She saw the first dark triangle of land glide toward her through the thinning darkness—the shimmer of rose and green on half-veiled slopes, the gradual lighting up of tapering peaks—and then, the full orchestration of the risen sun.

She reached the deck to find not only Mr. Todd, but the greater number of the passengers, assembled to watch the gorgeous spectacle from the entrance of Honolulu Bay. Night had rolled up from the sleepy town, and surged in great sails of pearl-tinted cloud up dark blue-green gullies of the hills. Red scars of volcanic slopes burned through the morning, whole peaks seemed incandescent, and terraced gardens, cleared from lower mists, stood outlined in reflected orange light.

A few moments more, and the iridescent pageant vanished. Down on the shore, rude wharves and freight-sheds and cheap, new-painted boat-houses stared out impertinently. Back of the harbor front the little town nestled prettily enough in its setting of tropic greens, and half-way up the volcanic cliffs patches of tilled fields or clumps of forest-trees relieved the sandy wastes. At intervals a tall white house among its palms shone out like a child's block, half imbedded in moss.

As the ship touched the dock, and the company broke up to watch the native boys diving for coppers, Mrs. Todd gathered her clan together for a holiday on shore. Yuki had decided to wear a white American gown. Gwendolen also was in white, like a great lily. Dodge showed up in spotless duck and a pith helmet; Pierre wore immaculate flannels; while Mrs. Todd, in the stiffest of skirts, the thinnest of lawn waists, and a white linen Alpine hat a trifle too small, looked unfortunately like a perfume bottle with a white leather top.

They walked in radiant single-file down the gangway, the faces of all three women changing to sudden blankness at the appalling rigidity of earth, after recent days on a swaying deck. "I—I—don't believe I can walk at all, just yet," said Mrs. Todd, and reached out for her natural protector. In an instant Dodge had whistled up two cabriolets driven by sleepy-eyed Kanakas in California hats. At the market, a low Spanish-looking edifice with no walls, Mrs. Todd insisted upon getting out. Some one on the ship had told her to be sure to see the market; and this the conscientious traveller intended to do, though the very peaks above them seemed to rock and leap with subconscious friskiness. Here thronged a mingled race, both buyers and sellers—English, Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, and Yankees. All the vegetable stands were owned by Chinese, all the fruit by Kanakas. Dodge insisted on the fact as eloquent of racial tendencies. In this magic climate the growth of vegetables is accompanied by an even more fervid growth of weeds, and so requires patient vigilance. Fruit, on the other hand, cultivates itself. "All the lordly Hawaiian has to do," said Dodge, "is to stand or sit under the tree, and let it fall into his lap." Gwendolen took the value from this last remark by indicating a heap of horny "jackfruit,"—a thing the shape and size of a watermelon, which grows out of the trunk, apparently, of live oaks, and asking, scornfully, how much Kanaka would be left when one of those had fallen.

The fish dealers' department gleamed with iridescent color. Shrimps and crabs seemed fashioned in Favrille glass. Lobsters wore polka-dots of blue. None of these crustacea had claws, but whether deprived of them by man or nature was never ascertained.

As they drove up the narrow avenues, the unique mixture of the population became more apparent. Chinese evidently formed the inferior caste of laborer, content with a daily wage. Cleverer Japanese bustled about newly opened shops of foreign wares, or hung out professional signs of doctor, lawyer, or notary public. The Yankee strolled about with a half-disdainful glance; but the lordliest was not so proud as the ragged sons of Kamehameha, who, preëmpting shady nooks in doorways, stared disapprovingly on the passer-by. In the grounds of the former "palace," members of a present legislature lolled on the green, and nibbled peanuts. Pert Kanaka girls, in New York shirt-waists and automobile veils, minced by the side of fat mamas in Mother Hubbard gowns, generally of red, with huge ruffles about the yoke.

"Stop, Cy! Tell the man to stop. There's a druggist! I have several things to get!"

"And look! next to it a book-store advertising the latest novels," supplemented Gwendolen. "Doesn't that seem a joke? We must get some. I see souvenirs, and photographs, and—"

"I'll tell you what we'd better do. You women-folks get out and shop. Le Beau will stick to Yuki, I guess; while Dodge and I take this carriage around to the post-office—I've heard there was one—and try to find out the latest news about the war," cried Mr. Todd.

In a quarter of an hour they were back, breathless. "War's coming, and it's coming soon!" panted the senator.

"Yes, that's the ticket. Japan has called, and Russia must show her hand or crawfish," supplemented Dodge.

"But not really, really—yet begun?" whispered Yuki, who had turned very pale.

"What does the young man mean?" asked Mrs. Todd, anxiously, of her spouse. "I can't believe in irresponsible war rumors. I sha'n't believe them. Why, only two days before we left Washington, Prince Breakitoff assured me solemnly that the difficulty would never be allowed to reach the point of war."

Mr. Todd winked toward his secretary. "Well," he said solemnly, "Prince Breakitoff ought to know more about the facts of the case than a Hawaiian newspaper."

"He certainly ought to," said Dodge, ambiguously.

"War! Who dares to hint of war?" cried Pierre. "Look at this sky above us, and that tangle of sun and shower dragging rainbow echoes across a peacock-colored bay! Who could be found to fight on such an earth? Do you not say so, too, my Yuki?"

Yuki started slightly, and hesitated, as if to form her words. Before she could speak, Dodge had interrupted: "As long as we are so close, would you-all mind walking one more block on foot? The prettiest sight in the town is just to the left of that jutting brick wall down there." He pointed. Mrs. Todd was off. Yuki slipped in close to Gwendolen, and clung to her friend's arm. She did not want to think, just now, of war. Past new American shops they went, ice-cream "parlors," dry-goods displays of underwear—"marked down" sales, of course—and windows of ready-made gowns on insipid waxen dummies. Dodge had taken a few feet in advance. He now turned sharply, facing into a narrow street, one of the old native thoroughfares, bordered by walls of brick and stone where moss spread and dampness oozed. On an absurdly narrow pavement squatted a row of fat and shapeless beings, presumably women, half buried in wreaths and coils of strange flowers.

"Behold the far-famed lei sellers of Hawaii!" announced Dodge, with an histrionic gesture.

"I see no hens," said Mrs. Todd, through raised lorgnettes.

"These are a different brand of lei," explained Dodge, without a smile; "flower-wreaths that are to the hat of the Hawaiian dandy what an orchid or a gardenia is to the button-hole of a Fifth Avenue sport."

The sellers had sprung instantly into kneeling postures, all as if pulled by a single wire. Brown arms went forth, like those of crabs, flower hung. "Lei, lei, Honolulu lei! Prettie flower! Prettie ladees! Dollar—Fufty cents! Here, ladee, prettie lei, twunty-fi' cents!"

"Offer a quarter for three, and see them hustle," said Dodge.

"Oh, what visions of beauty!" breathed Gwendolen, and flung down silver coin at random. "See, ropes of carnations! Pink oleanders threaded into regular cables! And oh, the lovely yellow things—my color—golden acacias, I believe. I shall loop myself like an East Indian idol in these fragrant necklaces. And what are those purple things, and those? Why, why, I don't know the others at all. I thought I was friends with every flower. They smell like heaven!"

"Frangipani, ylang-ylang, stephanotis, plumaria, acacia," rattled Dodge, in the tone and manner of a professional guide.

"What a delightful courier you would make, Mr. Dodge!" cried saucy Gwendolen. "I think I'll bespeak your services, now, for my wedding journey."

"I'm jolly well apt to be along on that particular trip, you know," retorted the young man, with such cool assurance that all laughed—except Mrs. Todd. That good lady had begun to view, with some apprehension, the over-confident tactics of the attaché. Gwendolen, after an unsuccessful attempt to stare him "down," bent flushed cheeks and laughing eyes to the flowers. "We must all wear lei, of course," she cried, a trifle unsteadily. "It's positively the only thing to do on such a day! Yuki, pink carnations will be ravishing on your little white sailor-hat, and also, by a happy coincidence, on Pierre's new Panama. Dad, you and mother must have this divine stephanotis, mixed with a little smilax, for a green old age. Just think of buying strung stephanotis by the yard! And, Mr. Dodge—last and not least, Mr. T. Caraway Dodge!—" Mockingly she caught up a string of magenta-colored "bachelor buttons," and would have offered them with a curtsey; but already Dodge had carefully wound his helmet in coils of acacia flowers until it had become, in shape and size, an old-fashioned beehive made of gold.

This time she presented her back squarely. The others withheld laughter until they should have read the expression on the chaperon's face. But she, oblivious apparently of this new bit of daring, had lorgnettes at her eyes, and was studying carefully a closely written list—a composite of suggestions, made up for her by admiring ship friends. "Punch Bowl Crater, The Bishop Museum, Banana Plantations, Waki-ki Beach—note colors on the shoals—House where R. L. Stevenson resided," she was murmuring, as though to fix each in her memory. Suddenly she looked up. "Cyrus, the carriages! I doubt whether we can get them all in, but I intend to do my best."

"Mother!" began Gwendolen, in a note of protest. Yuki was smiling, and Pierre also. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered. The countenance of Dodge, however, had an acrobatic fall from elation to horrified disappointment. At sight of this, Gwendolen actually glittered mischief.

"Certainly, mother dear," she hastened to answer. "Let us take everything in—even a little more, if possible. We all need our minds improved—and some of us our manners!" Dodge, darting a look into her face, found only trustful innocence. The carriages had arrived. With great ostentation he assisted Mrs. Todd into her place. "I think I shall be able to supply one or two interesting spots not down on that list," he suggested, with a tentative look at the empty cushion beside her. "Claus Spreckels' house, the Infirmary, the Honolulu University with miles of hedges made up of volcanic stone overgrown with night-blooming cereus—you mustn't miss that!" Dodge's eyes and his smile were frankness embalmed and irradiated. Mrs. Todd perforce smiled in reply. "Jump in," she said cordially. "You're quite a treasure in travelling, Mr. Dodge."

Gwendolen meekly took a rear seat by her father. As she pressed lovingly against him, sending upward the tiniest little teased smile of discomfiture, his face broke into merry wrinkles. "I think you've found your match this time, little girl," he whispered.

"You just wait," nodded the oracular Gwendolen.

It is a memorable experience, analogous to nothing else in the world, that landing, for one iridescent day, in the Pacific's mid-ocean, throwing one's fancies and one's heart into strange tropic scenes, and then returning at nightfall, like tired, happy children, to the great old mother-nursery of the ship.

By the next morning, not even a cloud on that horizon from which we are fleeing betrays the hiding-place of land. At once the island takes proper place as a vision, a mirage of the imagination, where souls of certain privileged beings have met, and are henceforth bound in a unity of mystic comradeship. After such a day, Pacific passengers turn to one another with kindlier smiles, the whole ship changes into one heaving picnic party, old Time himself joins in the holiday, and personal dislikes, brought on board, are flung to the waves. That most of these animosities, like the Biblical bread, return to the owners after not so many days, need not affect present hilarity.

As may be supposed, Gwendolen and her closest attendant, Dodge, were small whirling centres in the round of gay diversions. The conventional deck-games were started, and a terminating three days of competitive skill, with prizes bought at Honolulu and marked with the name of the ship and date of voyage, duly announced. Revelry was to culminate in a grand "fancy dress ball," the night before landing, a prize being given to the costumer who showed most skill in fashioning his or her attire from things procurable on board ship, and in carrying out the character assumed. In order to waste no more time upon this function, it may be stated that Mr. T. Caraway Dodge as "Dandy Jim,"—with painted purple rings on a dress shirt and a "claw-hammer" coat a size too small, ebony countenance, lips like two flaming sausages caught loosely at the ends, and a wig fashioned from the hair of his bunk mattress—sang and cake-walked himself straight to the prize, while defeated contestants rent night with applause and acclamation.

From the smoking-room an incessant clinking, as of fairy castanets, fretted the ears of feminine curiosity. Mr. Todd explained that it was merely the sound of checkers and chessmen rattling to the shiver of the ship's screw.

The sun came up each morning, small and round, like a mandarin orange; expanded himself into a blinding deity; and at evening went down again, a blood-red orange, into the sea. The days he brought were long and golden, but not long enough for all the practising of bull-board, quoits, shuffle-board, and deck tennis. Each morning, after breakfast, certain acrobatic performances, free of charge, were held. Bag-punching was the children's favorite. One could count on an audience there, of upturned faces, wide-eyed and solemn with admiration. Some of the passengers saw fit to attach pedometers, and walk an incredible number of miles each day.

In the evening, Mrs. Todd and bridge whist reigned supreme. The Captain proved to be a player; so, to his present anguish, was Dodge. Gwendolen took an elfish delight in luring this young man to a table, under pretence of desiring to be his partner, and then, at the last moment, slipping in a foreordained substitute; after which she sped off, carolling, to a moonlit deck. Once there, the fuming and impotent Dodge recognized only too clearly what she would do. At least a dozen new acquaintances of the other sex had been made thus far by Gwendolen. It was her wont to dispense Emersonian philosophy and delicately portioned encouragement to those who were fortunate enough to secure her companionship. There was a young Dutch merchant on his way to coffee plantations in Java, very blond and fierce as to mustachios, and mild in the eyes. A Chicago representative, on his way to sell to Eastern potentates his particular make of automobile, had already needed, to quote Gwendolen's own, words, "a slight slackening of speed."

An English "leftenant" returning to South Africa, carried with him his own marvellous outfit for the making of afternoon tea, backed by a mammoth English plum-cake in a tin box. He was one to be propitiated, especially toward eight bells on an afternoon.

An Austrian viscount posed as the slayer of jungle beasts. "Beeg gam," he called them. He doted upon seeing this timid and shrinking maid cower beneath the bloody wonder of his yarns. No one before had inspired such thrilling denouements as Mees Todd. He recognized her at once for his affinity, and on the night before landing condescended to tell her so. The shock was rude, but he deserved what he got.

Pierre and Yuki joined in these several amusements and occupations during the morning and afternoon hours, both being much petted and nattered by the ladies of the ship, as beau ideals of young lovers. In the evenings, on the balmy deck, they were left to themselves. Wonderful talks grew between them—whispers, sometimes, that the jealous wind tore from their lips before the last word came. Yuki had not won back the half-troth given, nor, on the other hand, had Pierre gained more.

Often their talk was of impersonal things. The young man delighted to draw from Yuki quaint phrases of comment, and hints of the Oriental imagery with which her fancy thrilled. She told him the story of the stars, Vega and Aquilla, called in her land the Herd-Boy and the Weaver-Girl; how, for some fault, committed before this little earth was made, they could cross the milky stream of Heaven, and meet, but one night in a year.

When he pointed to a flock of flying fish skimming in a blue and silver phantasy above a turquoise floor, she called them the souls of birds that had flown too far from land, and been drowned at sea.

Within a few days of landing, a certain change, perceptible, it may be, only to the most sensitive, crept into the elements of air and water, and tinged even the up-piling clouds. Yuki stared now, for long moments, in silence, toward that hidden bank of the West. Pierre felt a change in her; but when he questioned, she laughed a little nervously, and said it was merely the outer edge of Nippon's "aura." Undoubtedly she was restless, a little moody, a trifle excited, and touched, at times, with brooding thoughts. She dreaded the opening with Pierre of topics which, all along, she had tried to avoid. Yet now, so close to home, she must make stronger efforts to free herself.

One afternoon at sundown, when the great reverberating "dressing gong" had sent most of the ladies below-stairs, Pierre, hurrying up to Yuki, where, for a half-hour past she had sat alone in a far corner of the deck looking outward, leaned and said:

"This promises to be the most wonderful sunset of all. It may be our last. The Captain has just told me that, with good luck, we sight land to-morrow. Do you dare come out with me to the very prow of the ship?"

"Yes, I dares," smiled Yuki, rising instantly. "I have wished often to go to that small, lonely point of ship." As they started, he caught up a discarded wrap. "The wind is fresher there," he said.

In a few moments she remarked, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "That will be a very good place to say—something."

Pierre made no reply. He also had been thinking of it as an excellent place in which to say—something.

Together, in silence, they made way over the aerial bridge that connects the triangular front deck with the main one; moving over the heads of steerage passengers, principally Chinese, who squatted in the sunken square to breathe in what they could of the cool, evening breeze. The sun was setting—"a polished copper gong like that ship one which makes much noise," said Yuki. It sank, clear-cut and very round, just at that point of the horizon where Nippon might be thought to lie.

Pierre placed the girl in the small angle at the peak. An arm was stretched behind her, and a hand clung to the rail, to protect them both. He leaned forward until his cheek almost pressed against her own. The soft incessant rush of wind blew her heavy hair back from a forehead spiritually pure and white. Her long, delicately modelled nose and small curved chin made a cameo against the blue-gray stone of dusk. Pierre, watching her intently, saw the last red ray of the sun quiver on her lips. The little hands were raised, as if unconsciously, and clapped thrice, very softly.

"Are you praying to your sun-god, little Christian Yuki?"

"Oh, no, indeed," said Yuki, quickly. "It is not prayer as we Christians call praying; it is only just our Japanese way of thanking Sun San for his great beauty, and the much good he does flowers, and people, and everything. In Japan we often thanks things just for being beautiful." She smiled up confidingly into his face. Her little hands, now lowered, flecked the rail like bits of white foam.

"Then I should pray to you, my darling, for in all this world never was anything more beautiful."

She made no effort to answer this, not even by her usual small, deprecating smile and shake of the head. The necessity of what she was to say, blotted from those first moments by visual beauty, now came heavily back to her. She steadied herself, turning slightly to see his face.

"Pierre, trust me a little more. Give back that promise—the promise you won from my weakness. It holds me from my path like a thorn. Our cause will be better without it."

Pierre started, and looked at the girl incredulously. "Have you let me lead you here deliberately to ask me such a thing?"

"Do not admit anger to your thought, dear Pierre," she pleaded. "I must have said some time. I should have said to you long before this; but we have been so—happy."

"Yes," said Pierre, doggedly. "We have been happy; and I intend that we shall be happier still. That promise is all I have to hold you by. I'd draw it tighter if I could."

"You will not understand—you will not try to understand me," said the girl, in a despairing voice. "Such promise given is disrespect to my parents, particularly to my father. If you do not release, I must tell to him, of course. It will be bad for you and me. Can you not trust me? Oh, Pierre, for love's sake, release—!"

"Release you!" he interrupted wildly. "This is my answer. It is for love's sake that I hold you, and will hold." He seized her in his arms, and held her with cruel strength. The night had come in fast. He did not care that the watchman by the tall, straight mast might see them. No one could hear the wind-driven, hurrying words. "This is my answer. I hold thus all you have given—and more. You are sincere, I believe, but mistaken. A weak yielding on my part would make your parents, and perhaps yourself, despise me. I keep what I have, I say, and I demand still more. You must be true to me, no matter what occurs!"

"Pierre, Pierre, you trample on your own hope, though you will not see it! To release me generously is your own best way!"

"You are the self-deceived," cried Pierre. "Pledge yourself irrevocably. Then only are we strong."

In the western sky an orange strip of day remained. A single bird, black against the glow, flew screaming across it, beating curved wings in the wind. "He will not see at all," whispered Yuki, as if to the bird.

"Oh, dearest, you cannot know in your calm, innocent heart the scourge of a love like mine! I hunger for you, I thirst! Sobbing, I dream of you, and I wake to new tears that you are still so far away. In pity, in mere mercy to human suffering, say that no other man shall marry you. Say this much at least, that if prejudice and war hold us apart awhile, you will be true to me until we can seek some new road to happiness!"

"Do I not know—do I not know?" she shivered, in answer to the first part of his speech. "Every day my heart is torn to small pieces, all of different size and shape. I do not understand how in sleep they come together once more. You are not lonely in that human suffering."

"Oh, you love me!" cried the man. "And on this voyage you love me as you had not done before! Is it not true?"

"It is true," sobbed Yuki.

"Mine is not love," said Pierre, again holding her fast; "it is hell—a raging hell of ecstasies! Oh, kiss me, Yuki; give me your lips before I die of joy! Now swear—swear—that no word but my own—no circumstance but death, can loose you from me!"

"You torture like the old monks," she panted. "Oh, do not make me say!"

"I command you, Yuki," he persisted, feeling new strength as she faltered. "It is my right. We belong to each other. Promise—promise—promise—nothing but death or my word to loose you!" He kissed her again and again, like a madman, pressing his lips down upon hers, catching her hands to kiss, devouring her eyes, cheeks, forehead, hair; while the girl, beaten down by the whirlwind, made no effort to resist.

Pierre took the long white ivory pin from her hair, and split it, thrusting the smaller portion into his coat, and returning that, with the ornament still attached, to her hair.

"I take this pledge, Yuki," he cried. "You have told me that it binds to the death a Japanese lover. We are bound. I hold you by a tangible bond. The next shall be a small, bright circle on this little hand. Give me the promise, Yuki—no need to struggle now. Give it me!"

"Kwannon protect me," gasped the girl; "I promise!"

A sudden vacuum fell. Pierre's breath was hard to recapture. He thought that Yuki had fainted, for her trembling had stopped. He shook one shoulder and bent down to gaze into her set, white face. Her eyes were wide open, and held two stars. She moved her lips now, and leaned far outward, gazing intently, as if watching the flight of an unseen thing.

"Yuki, Yuki, what is it—what do you see?" he cried, in terror.

"My soul! I think a small soul fled!" All at once she collapsed into unconsciousness. As Pierre lifted her, he shook springing tears away, and bit his quivering lips as he muttered—"I feel as if I tortured a child; but she does not realize our perils. Her fast promise is our only hope. Thank God that I could win it!"