n for the first time
moving through them--a lone, far outpost of the thing he knew, one
yellow man against ten thousand whites, unshaken, unappalled, facing the
odds, working so early, so late, day after day and year after year, and
smiling a little, perhaps, as he peeped behind the scenes of the thing
which we call civilization. Yes, cry as he might inside, he must have
smiled outside, sometimes, through those years of terror, at the sight
of Minister Malden shrinking at the shadow of the ghost of something
that was nothing, to vanish at a touch of light.

And now his foreign service was ended; his post was to be relieved; and
he could go wherever he wanted to go.

Not quite yet. He had been dreaming, that was all. His eyes opened, and
rested, not on me, but to the right of me. Then I saw for the first time
that I wasn't alone in the room with him after all, but that Minister
Malden was standing there, where he had stood through all the din like a
little boy struck dumb before a sudden Christmas tree.

And like a little boy, he went red and white and began to stammer.

"I--I--Yen Sin--" He held his breath a moment. Then it came out all
together. "_I'll run and fetch them--both!_" With that he was past me,
out of the door and up the ladder, and I heard his light feet drumming
on the dock, bearing such news as never was.

* * *

The Chinaman's eyes had come to me now, and there was a queer light in
them that I couldn't understand. An adventure beyond my little
comprehension was taking shape behind them, and all I knew enough to do
was to sneak around behind the counter and take hold of one of his
fingers and shake it up and down, like one man taking a day's leave of
another. His eyes thanked me for my violence; then they were back again
to their mysterious speculations. An overweening excitement gathered in
them. He frightened me. Quite abruptly, as if an unexpected reservoir of
energy had been tapped, the dying man lifted on an elbow and slid one
leg over the edge of the couch. Then he glanced at me with an air almost
furtive.

"Boy," he whispered. "Run quick gettee Mista Minista, yes."

"But he's coming _himself_," I protested. "You better lay back."

"Mista Yen Sin askee _please_! Please, boy."

What was there for me to do? I ran. Once on the dock above, misgivings
assailed me. I was too young, and the night was too appalling. I had
forgotten the wind, down in the cabin, but in the open here I felt its
wei