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At last I was exasperated into saying, “Why don’t you put the matter at rest by talking to Hermann?” and I added sneeringly: “You don’t expect me perhaps to speak for you?”

To this he said, very loud for him, “Would you?”

And for the first time he lifted his head to look at me with wonder and incredulity. He lifted his head so sharply that there could be no mistake. I had touched a spring. I saw the whole extent of my opportunity, and could hardly believe in it.

“Why. Speak to . . . Well, of course,” I proceeded very slowly, watching him with great attention, for, on my word, I feared a joke. “Not, perhaps, to the young lady herself. I can’t speak German, you know. But . . .”

He interrupted me with the earnest assurance that Hermann had the highest opinion of me; and at once I felt the need for the greatest possible diplomacy at this juncture. So I demurred just enough to draw him on. Falk sat up, but except for a very noticeable enlargement of the pupils, till the irises of his eyes were reduced to two narrow yellow rings, his face, I should judge, was incapable of expressing excitement. “Oh, yes! Hermann did have the greatest . . .”

“Take up your cards. Here’s Schomberg peeping at us through the blind!” I said.

We went through the motions of what might have been a game of e’carte’. Presently the intolerable scandalmonger withdrew, probably to inform the people in the billiard-room that we two were gambling on the verandah like mad.

We were not gambling, but it was a game; a game in which I felt I held the winning cards. The stake, roughly speaking, was the success of the voyage–for me; and he, I apprehended, had nothing to lose. Our intimacy matured rapidly, and before many words had been exchanged I perceived that the excellent Hermann had been making use of me. That simple and astute Teuton had been, it seems, holding me up to Falk in the light of a rival. I was young enough to be shocked at so much duplicity. “Did he tell you that in so many words?” I asked with indignation.

Hermann had not. He had given hints only; and of course it had not taken very much to alarm Falk; but, instead of declaring himself, he had taken steps to remove the family from under my influence. He was perfectly straightforward about it–as straightforward as a tile falling on your head. There was no duplicity in that man; and when I congratulated him on the perfection of his arrangements–even to the bribing of the wretched Johnson against me–he had a genuine movement of protest. Never bribed. He knew the man wouldn’t work as long as he had a few cents in his pocket to get drunk on, and, naturally (he said-“NATURALLY”) he let him have a dollar or two. He was himself a sailor, he said, and anticipated the view another sailor, like myself, was bound to take. On the other hand, he was sure that I should have to come to grief. He hadn’t been knocking about for the last seven years up and down that river for nothing. It would have been no disgrace to me– but he asserted confidently I would have had my ship very awkwardly ashore at a spot two miles below the Great Pagoda. . . .

And with all that he had no ill-will. That was evident. This was a crisis in which his only object had been to gain time–I fancy. And presently he mentioned that he had written for some jewellery, real good jewellery–had written to Hong-Kong for it. It would arrive in a day or two.