Part 10

"That is why so many men become inveterate gamblers; why so many who came out with high hopes of accomplishing something end by committing suicide."

As he talked on in this strain, quietly, yet evidently with deep feeling, Miss MacAllister began to ask herself if she had not, in her own mind, judged this young aristocrat too harshly. Perhaps he was not so bad as she had thought him the evening before, when she had refused any longer to play his accompaniments. Perhaps there was some excuse for his being in the condition which De Vaux had blundered out to them that morning.

At any rate, he seemed to be revealing to her another side of his character. She had met him first as the graceful, polished man of the world, a little cynical perhaps, and yet so courteous in his manners towards her as to hide the unpleasant characteristics. She had noted his contemptuous attitude towards Sinclair, his look and tone of studied insult. She had caught a glimpse of the greedy, lustful expression in his eyes as he bent over her at the piano, and, before the evening was done, the leer of intoxication.

But here was another aspect which she had not looked for. Without appearing to seek sympathy, he was appealing to her feelings, and in spite of herself she responded:

"I had not thought of the life out here in that way," she said. "It had appeared quite fascinating to me."

"So it appears to nearly everybody at first. But after a while it palls upon them. At last it becomes unbearable."

"Then why do they not go home, or to Australia or America or somewhere else where they would be among their own people?"

"We are forgotten at home. We should be strangers there. And as for Australia or America, life out here unfits a man to succeed in lands where everybody must be his own servant and where there is no road to success but by hard work."

A little ray of comprehension shot into Miss MacAllister's mind. It was with a touch of impatience that she answered:

"But, Mr. Carteret, you do not mean to say that you have been long enough here to unfit you for work anywhere else. If you do not like the life, why do you stay here?"

"_Pro bono familiae_," he replied with a bitter laugh. "Because of the affection of my beloved elder brother."

"The consul tells me that he enjoys himself here," she said, avoiding any discussion of his family affairs. "He says that there is very good shooting and some of the best sea-bathing he has ever experienced."

"He is welcome to the shooting, tramping over the hills and through the rice fields in a climate like this. As for the bathing, any pleasure in it is spoiled by the walk home in the heat afterwards."

At that instant the consul, who was playing, returned a ball with such a screw on it that after falling in his opponent's court it bounded back over the net. His opponent, in a mad effort to return it, plunged headlong into the net and fell. In celebration of which achievement the consul threw his racket high in the air, turned a handspring, and ended up by reversing himself and walking across the court on his hands, with his feet in the air.

"Splendid, Mr. Beauchamp!" cried Miss MacAllister. "Brilliantly done! Especially the gymnastic performance!"

"Right-oh, Miss MacAllister!" exclaimed a deep voice behind her. "The consul is acrobat enough to make a shining success as a sailor man."

It was Captain Whiteley, come up to drink a cup of tea and say good-bye before casting off for Hong-Kong.

"Oh, Captain Whiteley, I'm so glad to see you before you go! But what is this I hear? You have let your doctor go off to Keelung to carve Chinese, and perhaps be carved himself. I am surprised at you."

"Not my fault, I assure you, Miss MacAllister. He was bound to go. He is of age. I could not restrain him."

"I think it is just splendid of him to go. That is the sort of thing I admire in a man. If I were a man, that is what I should like to do."

"I am awfully glad, Miss MacAllister, that Sinclair has at last done something which pleases you. I was beginning to be afraid that you were offended with him past the possibility of reconciliation."

She looked at him sharply. His face was lamblike in its innocence, but his eyes were twinkling.

"That will do, Captain Whiteley. You have said quite enough."

The telltale colour deepened in her face, and her mother, who was talking to Carteret nearby, heard and saw, closed her lips tightly, and sniffed.

The little party of white-clad players were still on the lawn when the _Hailoong_ moved down the river, zigzagged her way through the field of mines, and once well beyond the bar steamed straight out over the motionless sea in the path of red-gold light from the setting sun. It seemed the breaking of the one link between them and the outside world. In the soft stillness of that evening in the Orient, London with its mud and smoke, its roar of traffic, its drab colours and familiar, unromantic life, seemed so far away that it might have belonged to another world.

Strange to say, it was not of London that Miss MacAllister was thinking. Again and again she surprised herself thinking of the big, fair-haired Canadian doctor. She tried to picture to herself his surroundings amid the sick and suffering, the men torn with shot and shell. She could not help contrasting them with the peaceful environment of the consul's tennis party, where men had been enjoying themselves in the company of the ladies, and incidentally emptying long glasses of whiskey and soda or sipping tea.

She recalled the looks of the man himself, his clean-cut features, straightforward gaze, his good-humour even when she was badgering him, and the hearty, boyish laugh when he and McLeod were plotting some mischief together. Involuntarily she contrasted him with the cynical discontent, the weary air and self-pity of the man with whom she had talked that afternoon. If Sinclair could have known her conclusions, he would have been well content.

*XVI*

*SERGEANT WHATISNAME*

But Sinclair did not know. Perhaps at that moment he was not thinking much about her. He was just entering on his long night's work among the wounded. Every power of mind was concentrated on the problem of those pain-racked human beings and how to relieve their sufferings.

And yet ever and anon, when he had finished an operation and his mind relaxed as his hands almost mechanically followed the familiar process of bandaging, a picture floated before his eyes. It was only a transparency, through which he could see every line of the brown limb or body he was binding up with care But it was as clear to him as though it had been done on canvas by the brush of a painter. It was the picture of a proudly-carried head, with a crown of brown hair, a beautiful oval face with rich colour, dark violet eyes dancing with fun, and full red lips parted in a teasing laugh, which made the hot blood tingle in his face at the very memory of it.

As the days passed by he had more time to think of that face. The first strenuous days over, the pressure on his time and strength relaxed somewhat. A number of the greatest sufferers died. But in the majority of cases the singular toughness and marvellous recuperative power of the Chinese seconded his skilful surgery. Many a man who, if he had belonged to any Western nation, would have been invalided home, never to be able to rejoin the colours, in ten days or two weeks' time left the hospital and returned to his regiment. There were but few wounded being brought in. The French were unable to advance beyond the shore line. The Chinese were unable to dislodge the French from the foothold they had obtained. Consequently, for nearly a month after the bombardment there was little fighting.

The weather, though exceedingly hot, was not unhealthy. In any case, those who might be sick preferred to go to their own doctors for medical treatment. While they acknowledged the superiority of the foreigner in surgery, they unhesitatingly maintained that their own physicians were unequalled in their knowledge of medicine.

The most common disease was the ever-present malarial fever. It was caused by two devils--the negative devil who industriously fanned the victim to give him chills and the positive devil who worked a furnace overtime to give him his spells of fever. As the foreign surgeon was a stranger to the country and supposed to have little acquaintance with those diligent devils, the preference was given to the incantations of native priests or the indescribable decoctions of native doctors.

As a result, Sinclair's duties had grown lighter every day. The service, which at first had taxed to the utmost even his splendid strength and vigour, had become less and less arduous, until, except for the necessity of living on native food, he had come to look upon it as a sort of picnic. Most of the dressings and all the preliminary examinations of new cases he was able to leave to his assistants. Dr. MacKay had gone to visit his converts at various places where bands of freebooters, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country, had thrown themselves upon the defenceless Christians, robbing, maltreating, torturing, and sometimes putting to death. But he left behind his student companions, whose knowledge of dressing wounds and giving simple treatments and acting the part of nurses, relieved the surgeon of much of his burden.

But it was principally on Sergeant Gorman that he had learned to rely. Every day revealed some new capability in that versatile Irishman. It was, however, in drilling and instructing an ambulance brigade that his capability was most evident. He was a master of the art of teaching men any form of military drill. But he was more than that. He was a born leader of men. Sinclair marvelled at the rapidity with which these uncouth, chattering Chinese peasants, who never by any accident had kept step for a dozen paces, and who never ceased their jabbering at any command given by their own officers, were reduced to silence and mastered squad and stretcher drill. They were raw material to begin with. Some of them were worse. The Chinese officers had drafted into this service some of the roughest characters in their regiments, to be rid of them. Yet these, who were accustomed to threaten to shoot their own officers when an unwelcome command was given, gave absolute and prompt obedience to this red-headed foreign devil, whom they had never seen till a few days before, who spoke their language imperfectly, and carried no weapon save a bit of a withe he had cut for a swagger-stick.

As Sinclair looked on he could not help but wonder at the shortsightedness and snobbery in the British army, which made officers of callow youths who knew nothing of war or leadership, and many of whom never would, and refused a commission to a man like this, whose mastery of men amounted to genius.

The middle of the month had passed. It was drawing towards sunset of a hot August day. The two men who had already grown into a fast friendship were out where the courtyard of their improvised hospital opened on the bank of the river. One of the wings and a clump of bamboos sheltered them from the still ardent rays of the sun. The evening breeze was just beginning to breathe along the river.

Dr. Sinclair was stretched on a long, bamboo reclining chair, which had been sent him from the headquarters of General Liu Ming-chuan. His hands were clasped behind his head. He was looking up at the sky, where an occasional fleck of cloud was changing from white to gold and crimson in the light of the sunset. In his white trousers, white canvas shoes, white negligee shirt, open at the neck, and with the shadow of a smile playing about his eyes and mouth, he looked the very personification of whole-hearted content. Sergeant Gorman was sitting opposite to him on a camp-chair of his own construction, smoking a short dudeen.

That afternoon General Liu Ming-chuan, accompanied by his staff, had paid a visit of inspection to their hospital. With a frankness and candour which could not be misunderstood, he had commended the work they had done, and on his own behalf and that of China had thanked them for their services. While his visit and appreciation were pleasant to them personally, it meant more than that. Henceforth there was to be no more of the open opposition they had experienced from the native doctors and priests, and even from some of the officers. It was no wonder that Sinclair was feeling well content.

"Do you know, Gorman, this job suits me fine. If I could get a permanent sit at something like this, with enough salary to live decently, I think I could be happy."

"An' if you do," replied Gorman, dropping back into the brogue as he always did when he was in good-humour, whether fighting or chatting with a friend--"an' if you do, wud you jist kape me in moind as your furst assistant?"

"That I would," replied Sinclair. "I do not know how I should get along without you."

"Begorra, an' it's glad I am to hear you say so; for it's more p'ace of moind I have here than iver I've had since the furst toime me mother-in-law came to bliss me home wid her prisince--since she furst beamed upon us like the sun thr'u' a gatherin' storm."

"The only thing which catches me here is the grub. I do not like this Chinese chow."

"Faith thin, it seems to like you."

"How's that?"

"You're gettin' fat on it."

"Do you really think so?"

"Bedad and I don't think so. I'm sure of it."

Sinclair solicited tested the tightness of his belt; lazily raised himself and examined it to find out at what hole it was buckled.

"Afraid you're wrong this time, Gorman. Not getting it round the waist anyway. Buckled in the same hole and not a bit tighter than before.

"Thin you're gettin' it round the jaws of you. Checks and double chin loike a howly father starvin' in Lent."

"Surely it's not so bad as that! I'll have to get more exercise. Nothing like training to keep down flesh. Run four or five miles of a morning. That's what will do it."

"Bedad thin, if that's thrue, that American gineral the Chinese have must have run all the way from Ameriky. Did iver you clap your two eyes on such a split-the-wind?"

"He sure is thin," replied Sinclair in the idiom of his native land. "As we used to say in Canada, he'd be handy to send on an errand down a pump."

"Faith," replied the Irishman, determined not to be beaten in exaggeration, "the pump would need to have a good valve or he'd leak out."

"You have it," laughed Sinclair. "I'll quit."

"Now, what do you make of him, anyway?"

"New England Yankee by his twang. Vermont by his build. Been in the South by his pronunciation of some words. But when he swears Montana is written all over him."

Now, if that isn't divilish cliver of you to spot him loike that! Now, isn't it? But did ever you hear such a name? Silas Z. Leatherbottom! Be the powers, if I had a name loike that, I'd change it or die in the attempt. Silas Z. Leatherbottom!"

"It would have been a mighty handy name to have had when you were under the Wallopin' Master," retorted Sinclair.

"Whisht now, docther dear. It's unfeelin' of you to call up painful memories. May the saints forgive me, but I cannot sit comfortable an' think of him."

Sinclair's boyish, care-free laugh rang out as Gorman left his camp-stool and began to pace restlessly up and down, making grimaces and gestures, half vengeful, half humorous.

"Be the powers of Knocktopher, but it wud be a pleasure jist to be twishtin' this bit of a shtick about the big body of him. The yells of him wud be the sw'atest music in me ears, barrin' always the lament at me mother-in-law's wake."

"Egskews me, gentlemen" (with a marked emphasis on the "me"). "Egskews me for intrewding on yewr private deliberations. But I had a leetle proposition to make to one of yew gentlemen, an' I reckoned thet yew wouldn't object to me droppin' in on yew t' talk it over."

"Certainly not, General Leatherbottom," replied Sinclair, rising to receive him. "We are delighted to have you call. Have a seat."

Sergeant Gorman had clapped his swagger-stick under his left arm, clicked his heels together, stood at attention, and saluted as if by instinct.

"Naow, by the Jumpin' Jemina, thet's what I call neatly done. Thet's whar yew Britishers get away on us. When it comes to fightin' we kin fight. Don't take no second place to ennybody I ever met, an' I've met some few in my time. But when it comes to takin' Indians or niggers or Chinks in hand lickin' them into shape, an' teachin' them haow to fight civilized thet's whar you've got us beat to a stand-still."

He was a tall man, a very tall man, two or three inches over six feet. But he was narrow-shouldered slab-sided, and marvellously thin. His small head seemed lost in a great cavern of a sun-helmet. A long, faded, yellow moustache drooped over the hollow cheeks and angular jaws. He sat down on the proffered camp-chair, hitching a holster containing a huge .44 Colt round a little more to one side, to allow him to sit back with comfort. His legs were so long that his knees stuck up at an acute angle. When he threw one over the other, they were so thin that they seemed to twine around each other in serpentine fashion.

He accepted a pipe, lighted it, leaned forward with one sharp elbow on a sharp knee, the hand helping to hold the pipe in his mouth as he talked. The other arm was across his knee and the long, bony hand hanging down.

"Ef yew gentlemen will egskews me, I'll make my proposition, an' we'll perceed to bizness. But fust I'd like t' give yew a leetle of my auttybiography, so's yew'll understand the sityewation."

With many quaint oaths and ingenious expletives, he told how he had served as a private in a Vermont infantry regiment in the Civil War, had been wounded and taken prisoner. After the war he had drifted into the cavalry and been engaged in Indian wars in the Dakotas and Montana. He was with Benteen's companies when Custer and his three hundred were massacred by the Sioux under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Then he had turned miner, and after much experience in the Black Hills, as well as in Montana and Idaho, had drifted to Formosa and had been engaged in developing gold workings but a little distance from where they sat when the war broke out.

"An' naow, gentlemen, I'm a general of brigade in the service of His Imperial Majesty of China, gettin' 's much dust in a month 's I could in a year of minin'. An' thet's why I am fur the time bein' a dewtiful subject of His Imperial Bigness.

"Mebbe yew'll b'lieve me, I hev seen sum fightin'. An' I ain't partiklar ef I see sum more. An' I hev idears whar t' plant an army, an' haow t' plan a defence or lay a trap. But this bizness of drillin' Chinks so's they'll walk t'gether, an' shoot t'gether, and dew what they're told without all talkin' at once like the sisters at a meetin'-house sewin'-bee, an' all gettin' tied up into a gol-durned tarnation tangle, thet's what knocks the spots off yewrs trewly.

"Naow, gentlemen, my proposition is thet the sergeant here jest step over with me to General Liew, an' take service with him till the end of the war. The general was mighty pleased with thet ar ambulance corpse of yourn. He'd make you a kurnel, second in command of a brigade. An' the spondoolix! Lots of it! Got it to burn! More'n a candidate for congress at election time! Money don't count with him no haow. Ef yew lick these ar Chinks into fightin' shape, I'll plan the campaign an' we'll whale those _parley-voos_ into the sea in no time. Then we'll get a concession an' the gold mine. Naow, what dew yew think of thet?"

"That sounds pretty good, sergeant," said Sinclair. "It looks like a chance for you.

"Thet's what I call a putty payin' proposition. Will yew take it?"

"Thank you, sir; I think not."

Leatherbottom opened his small, light-blue eyes as wide as the cavernous depths of their sockets would allow, removed the pipe from his mouth, and spat far out into the river:

"Naow will yew tell me haow it is thet yew will not take on a payin' proposition like thet? Dew yew forget the spondoolix?"

"I do not, sir."

"Then, will yew tell me why?"

"I have fought for twenty-four years under one flag. There is only one other that I would fight under."

"I presyewme thet is the stars and stripes, the flag of the Yew.S.A.?"

"It is not, sir."

"Then, will yew tell me what flag it is?" asked the general in evident surprise.

"The green flag with the golden harp, the flag of a self-governing Ireland!"

"But there ain't no army 'lowed to carry sech a flag."

"Then, till there is, I'll still fight under the old flag and the old queen I have served more than half my life."

"An' yew air an' Irishman?"

"Yes, sir."

"An' a Roman Catholic?"

"I am, sir."

"Wall--I'll--be--gol--durned!"

Sergeant Gorman's moustache and eyebrows fairly bristled. The little, shrewd blue eyes of the Indian fighter were quick to notice it:

"Egskews me, sergeant; I ain't meant no offence. 'Twas only thet I had been informed thet the Irish will hev a Fourth-of-July celebration the day the Yewnion Jack gits out of thet ar island fur good."

"Then you were misinformed, sir."

"Wall, I reckon it's a case of live an' l'arn. When I was t' hum I thought the Yew.S.A. were putty near the hull thing. When I came out here I putty soon found out they warn't. When I was in our country, a-listenin' to the politicians, I thought every Irishman was jest thirstin' fur the blood of the English. I came out here an' naow yew tell me they ain't. Will you egskews me? I hev sum things t' l'arn yet."

"Certainly, sir. We all make mistakes."

"Thank yew. But why yew'd refewse t' change yewr flag when yew knew thet the spondoolix was sure, thet beats me. Oh, wall, I reckon every man has his own way of lookin' at things. Say, doctor, whar's the elder?"

"Do you mean Dr. MacKay?';

"Sartin."

"Oh, he left several days ago to visit some of his converts. I guess the heathen have been roughing things a bit and making it hot for the Christians. He went to see if he could help them out."

"Do he carry weepons?"

"I believe not."

"Wall, thet beats all. I've seen some putty nervy things. I've seen whar Custer an' his three hundred rode slap-bang into Sittin' Bull an' his red devils on the Little Big Horn, an' got skulped, every man of them. But they hed guns an' hed a chance. But t' go out among these ar yellow heathen, when they're rampagin' fur the blood of furriners, without so much 's even a .32 t' put the fear of God into them thet's what I call temptin' Providence. It's givin' Providence a chance t' let them dew their durndest and save itself the trubble of interferin'."

The sun had gone down and the moon had taken its place riding in silver radiance across the cloudless sky. General Leatherbottom rose to go. Sinclair and Gorman accompanied him through the hospital to the street door. A squad of the sergeant's ambulance corps, who were on guard, presented arms with the precision and unity of European veterans.

With democratic freedom the general thrust his long, bony hand first into Sinclair's, then into Gorman's:

"Never seen the beat of thet ambulance corpse of yourn, fur the time yew've had 'em. But, by the Jumpin' Jemina, I'd like to hev seen yew lickin' the regiments of my brigade into shape."

*XVII*

*WOLVES AND THEIR PREY*

The end of August found the French and Chinese in the same state of impasse. As a consequence there was little bloodshed, and few wounded were being brought into the hospital. If it had not been for the shocking carelessness of the Chinese in handling firearms and explosives, there would have been almost none. Time began to hang somewhat heavy on the hands of Dr. Sinclair and his assistant.

"Getting mighty slow here," he remarked to Gorman one day.