CHAPTER I

"Oh! Chiang Nan's a hundred li, yet in a moment's space

I've flown away to Chiang Nan and touched a dreaming face."

--TS'EN-TS'AN.

A young man can get himself into trouble in China.

He may refuse to eat the food that is pushed into his

mouth at a Chinese banquet by the perfectly

well-intentioned man sitting beside him. In that case he will

hardly do more than arouse the contempt of his

beneficiary and his host. He simply shows that he lacks

good Chinese table manners, for at a Chinese banquet

it is proper to stuff food into your companion's mouth,

no matter how full his stomach may be.

Another way to offend the Chinese is to refuse a gift.

But these are minor things. The surest method to

arouse the suspicion, dislike and animosity of China is

deliberately to keep your affairs shrouded in mystery.

Discuss your important business secrets in loud shouts;

no one will pay the slightest attention. But whisper

mysteriously in your friend's ear, and spies will attend

you! Leave a note-book filled with precious data

plainly in view upon your dressing-table, and your

room-boy won't for the life of him peek into it. Lock

that same note-book away in a dressing-table drawer,

and your room-boy will move heaven and earth to find

out what it's all about!

The time of the day was mid-forenoon; the time of

the year was spring. The low, mournful voice of a

temple gong floated across the race of brown water.

River _fokies_, on sampans and junks, were singing their

old work song, the Yo-ho--hi-ho! of the ancient river, as

their naked, broad backs bent to the sweeps. A

pleasant breath of perspiring new earth was drifting down

the great stretch of yellow water on a light, warm wind.

Peter had taken his favorite stand on the upper-boat

deck, where the wireless shack was situated, with

one hand wrapped loosely about a davit guy, the other

thoughtfully rattling a cluster of keys in his pocket.

Spring is for youth, and Peter was young; yet he

did not reflect in any way the mood of the new season.

He felt gloomy and depressed. Life seemed an empty,

a dreary thing to Peter, because he could see himself

getting nowhere.

In spite of the sweet candor of the young spring

day, one of the first sounds that came to his ears as he

stood there, in the shadow of the life-boat, was the

brazen clamor of a death cymbal. One of China's four

hundred millions had died in the night; now his spirit

was being escorted to the seventh heaven of his blessed

forefathers, by the death cymbal, clashing with a sober

din to drive the devils away from his late abode.

The shadow of the life-boat was rather unaccountably

attenuated; Peter turned around and looked into the

bland, unsmiling face of Jen, a Chinese deck-boy.

Pig-tails were coming back in style again. About six inches

of wispy, purple-black braid extended downward from

Jen's white cap. His face was quite yellow, and his

eyes were green. An understandable light came and

flickered across their satiny surface as Peter looked

inquiringly into them.

"Wanchee my?" he asked.

The deck-boy took a cautious and all inclusive look

of the broad, gray deck, bending head to look past the

giant funnels, the first of which stood about twenty

feet forward of them.

"Stay allatime on _King Asia_?" inquired the

Chinese, moiling his hands together and bowing slightly.

Peter gave him a blue-eyed, indolent stare.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. "What's on your mind, Jen?"

"You tell me what going do," replied the yellow

one meaningly. "Can do?"

"Mebbe can do," replied Peter, folding his hands.

"You run up to the place on Jen Kee Road as soon as

you catchee sampan. Tell man-man if I decide to do

anything I will drop in and tell him. You don't know,

Jen, but he knows that my word is good. If I decide to

go up-river I'll tell man-man. If I decide to do

nothing, I'll say nothing to man-man."

"Allee light, allee light," said Jen, backing away a

few steps. "You tell man-man, eh?"

As Peter watched the retreating skinny shoulders

bob up and down as they went away from him toward

the after ladder, he felt just a little more undecided than

he had five minutes earlier. He went into the wireless-room,

to straighten up the apparatus before locking the

door for the visit in Shanghai.

As he was locking the tool-box--the Chinese river

thieves would steal anything they could lay hands

on--he heard his name called in a silvery voice accompanied

by a man's pleasant laugh, and he went out on deck to

find that Mr. Andover, with the twins in tow, was all

dressed up for a trip ashore.

The twins and Anthony Andover were passengers,

bound on a sight-seeing trip through the East, and as

Peter Moore was a very impressionable young man, it

is only natural that the twins be discussed first, in

virtue of their loveliness.

Peter had first contemplated Peggy and Helen

Whipple in the _King of Asia's_ dining-room. It would

have been a rather impossible thing not to see Peggy and

Helen Whipple, if you were young, and with fair eyesight.

At the first dinner after leaving the Golden Gate

Peter had gone into the dining-room rather early, as

he skipped tiffin (by reason of an empty pocket) and

was ravenously hungry.

He had looked up over his first spoonful of

mulligatawny à la Capron to meet the clear, undistilled,

brown-eyed gaze of Peggy Whipple, who had seated

herself at the captain's table. In that liquid,

brown-eyed gaze had lurked a sparkle of mischief, a slightly

arrogant look of inquisitive scrutiny, and perhaps a

playful invitation.

As Peggy Whipple gave him that mischievous, liquid-brown

glance when he was in the act of lifting a level

soupspoonful to his lips, he did not, as a man might

do under the circumstances, spill the soup upon the

tablecloth, or back into the dish; nor did he pause in

the work of lifting the liquid to his mouth.

He did not have to look at the spoon to guide its

passage to his mouth. Without spilling a drop, he

captained the spoon to its destination, maintaining his

clear, deep-blue eyes upon the beautiful brown ones of

the young passenger. And, without lowering his eyes

once, he lifted the loaded spoon up twice in succession.

This skillful management brought a smile to the

pretty face of the girl. Perhaps she had expected him

to spill the soup under her glance; it was to be

expected; more than probably the thing had happened in

past episodes of Peggy, for she was distractingly fair

to look upon, and her turned-up nose should have

disarmed any man.

Her hair was golden and sleek and drawn back

straight from her low, white forehead and knotted

together in the back, calling attention to a neck that was

slim and beautifully proportioned. Pink and white and

gold described her. She seemed to bristle with a sort

of fidgety energy, as if she had so much youth and

loveliness stored up in her that she had a tremendous time

keeping it all within bounds.

After Peter had slowly, but not at all insolently or

impudently, taken all of this in, in the time required to

stow away three heaping spoonfuls of mulligatawny à

la Capron, by dead reckoning, she looked away from

him with a little pout.

Peter followed her glance. He had not noticed the

other girl before. It was evident that they were of the

same blood, but the other girl seemed older. She, too,

had sprung from a brown-eyed ancestry, and she, too,

was blond and pink and lovely, with the prettiest

fingers and finger-nails Peter had seen for some time.

Her glance, arising to meet his, was brown and very

calm; unlike her sister, she appeared to be grave, more

of the deliberate, thoughtful type.

It was in the shop of a Japanese silk merchant on

Motomatchi Chome that he had met them for the first

time. Several times on the trip across he had passed

them on the deck, always escorted by proud young men.

They were the most popular girls on shipboard.

Beauty rarely travels in pairs; these were unusual

twins.

Once, as Peter was swinging down the ladder from

topside, he came upon Peggy alone, looking rather blue.

It may have been that she was simply in repose; and

the contrast gave him that impression. Her eyes

dreamingly encountered his, and the mischievous light

flickered in them and instantly went out.

She ran her eyes down the white uniform with the

gold emblems of his profession at the lapels, dropped

her eyelids demurely, and seemed to wait. He hesitated,

and she stood still; but he passed on, leaving her

staring after him with a little pout. Obviously the

twins had traveled much!