carce twice a century the whole world over. She was unhampered
by rule or convention. Religion, with her, was a series of abstractions,
partly learned from Yunsan, partly worked out for herself. Vulgar
religion, the public religion, she held, was a device to keep the toiling
millions to their toil. She had a will of her own, and she had a heart
all womanly. She was a beauty--yes, a beauty by any set rule of the
world. Her large black eyes were neither slitted nor slanted in the
Asiatic way. They were long, true, but set squarely, and with just the
slightest hint of obliqueness that was all for piquancy.

I have said she was no fool. Behold! As I palpitated to the situation,
princess and sea-cuny and love not a little that threatened big, I racked
my cuny's brains for wit to carry the thing off with manhood credit. It
chanced, early in this first meeting, that I mentioned what I had told
all the Court, that I was in truth a Korean of the blood of the ancient
house of Koryu.

"Let be," she said, tapping my lips with her peacock fan. "No child's
tales here. Know that with me you are better and greater than of any
house of Koryu. You are . . ."

She paused, and I waited, watching the daring grow in her eyes.

"You are a man," she completed. "Not even in my sleep have I ever
dreamed there was such a man as you on his two legs upstanding in the
world."

Lord, Lord! and what could a poor sea-cuny do? This particular sea-cuny,
I admit, blushed through his sea tan till the Lady Om's eyes were twin
pools of roguishness in their teasing deliciousness and my arms were all
but about her. And she laughed tantalizingly and alluringly, and clapped
her hands for her women, and I knew that the audience, for this once, was
over. I knew, also, there would be other audiences, there must be other
audiences.

Back to Hamel, my head awhirl.

"The woman," said he, after deep cogitation. He looked at me and sighed
an envy I could not mistake. "It is your brawn, Adam Strang, that bull
throat of yours, your yellow hair. Well, it's the game, man. Play her,
and all will be well with us. Play her, and I shall teach you how."

I bristled. Sea-cuny I was, but I was man, and to no man would I be
beholden in my way with women. Hendrik Hamel might be one time
part-owner of the old _Sparwehr_, with a navigator's knowledge of the
stars and deep versed in books, but with women, no, there I would not
give him better.

He smi