e would
get a reprimand from the sergeant who was waiting for the prisoner. And,
furthermore, he would get a reprimand at Papeete as well.

He touched the mules with the whip and drove on. He looked at his watch.
He would be half an hour late as it was, and the sergeant was bound to
be angry. He put the mules into a faster trot. The more Ah Cho persisted
in explaining the mistake, the more stubborn Cruchot became. The
knowledge that he had the wrong man did not make his temper better. The
knowledge that it was through no mistake of his confirmed him in the
belief that the wrong he was doing was the right. And, rather than incur
the displeasure of the sergeant, he would willingly have assisted a
dozen wrong Chinagos to their doom.

As for Ah Cho, after the gendarme had struck him over the head with the
butt of the whip and commanded him in a loud voice to shut up, there
remained nothing for him to do but to shut up. The long ride continued
in silence. Ah Cho pondered the strange ways of the foreign devils.
There was no explaining them. What they were doing with him was of a
piece with everything they did. First they found guilty five innocent
men, and next they cut off the head of the man that even they, in their
benighted ignorance, had deemed meritorious of no more than twenty
years' imprisonment. And there was nothing he could do. He could only
sit idly and take what these lords of life measured out to him. Once, he
got in a panic, and the sweat upon his body turned cold; but he fought
his way out of it. He endeavoured to resign himself to his fate by
remembering and repeating certain passages from the "Yin Chih Wen" ("The
Tract of the Quiet Way"); but, instead, he kept seeing his dream-garden
of meditation and repose. This bothered him, until he abandoned himself
to the dream and sat in his garden listening to the tinkling of the
windbells in the several trees. And lo! sitting thus, in the dream,
he was able to remember and repeat the passages from "The Tract of the
Quiet Way."

So the time passed nicely until Atimaono was reached and the mules
trotted up to the foot of the scaffold, in the shade of which stood the
impatient sergeant. Ah Cho was hurried up the ladder of the scaffold.
Beneath him on one side he saw assembled all the coolies of the
plantation. Schemmer had decided that the event would be a good
object-lesson, and so he called in the coolies from the fields and
compelled them to be present. As they c