wed a
woman's laugh. I paused to listen. It was well that I did so. They were
rehearsing for the evening's performance the murder scene from _La
Tosca_!

On another occasion, long after midnight, I was aroused from sleep by a
terrific racket which suddenly burst forth in the streets below. I
heard the crash of splintering bottles followed by the steps of the
native gendarmes beating a hasty retreat. Then, from throats that spoke
my own tongue, rose the rollicking words of a long-familiar chorus:

"I was drunk last night,
I was drunk the night before,
I'll get drunk tomorrow night
If I never get drunk any more;
For when I'm drunk
I'm as happy as can be,
For I am a member of the Souse Fam-i-lee!"

Leaning from my casement, I hailed a passing Frenchman.

"Who are they?" I asked him.

"Les touristes Americains sont arrives, M'sieu," he answered dryly.

By the light of the street-lamps as he turned away I could see him
shrug his shoulders.

Thinking it over, it struck me that I had been overharsh in my judgment
of the homesick exiles who in this far corner of the earth are
clinching the rivets of France's colonial empire.

The next morning I set sail from Saigon for China. Leaving the mouth of
the river in our wake, we rounded the mighty promontory of Cap St.
Jacques and headed for the open sea. The palm-fringed shore line of
Cochin-China dropped away; the blue mountains of Annam turned pale and
ghostly in the evening mists. A sun-scorched, pestilential land.... I
was glad to leave it. But already I am longing to return. I want once
more to sit at a cafe table beneath the awnings of the Rue Catinat,
before me a tall glass with ice tinkling in it. I want to hear the
_pousse-pousse_ coolies padding softly by in the gathering twilight. I
want to see the little Annamite women in their sleazy silken garments
and the boisterous, swaggering _legionnaires_ in their white helmets. I
want to stroll once more beneath the tamarinds beside the Mekong, to
smell the odors of the hot lands, to hear again the throbbing of the
tom-toms and the soft music of the wind-blown temple bells. For

"When you've 'eard the East a-callin'
You won't never 'eed naught else."

Transcriber's Notes:

Inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words preserved. (blind-folded,
blindfolded; body-guard, bodyguard; coast-guard, coastguard;
co-operation, cooperation; co-terminous, coterminous; cock-fighting,