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This longing, or a flash of anger, or the rice-brandy working so nimbly in his wits, gave him both impulse and plan. "Don't move," he whispered; "wait here." And wriggling backward, inch by inch, feet foremost among the crowded bellies of the jars, he gained the further darkness.

The interim had been packed with incongruity. There had been a dinner with Kempner, solemn, full of patriotism and philosophy; a drunken dinner at Teppich's; another, and a worse, at Nesbit's; and the banquet of a native merchant, which began at four o'clock on melon-seeds, tea, black yearling eggs, and a hot towel, and ended at three in the morning on rice-brandy and betel served by unreal women with chalked faces and vermilion-spotted lips, simpering and melancholy.

The rice-brandy was hot and potent; for of a sudden Rudolph found himself afoot and awake. A dizzy warmth cleared his spirit. He understood perfectly. This man, for some strange reason, was Wutzler, a coolie and yet a brother from the fatherland. He and his nauseous alien brandy had restored the future. There was more to do. "Come on." The forsaken lover was first man up the bank.

The dinner, which came at two o'clock, was so much of a function, on account of the number of guests in the house, that it impressed itself upon my memory. First in the salon there were small tables set, containing hors d'oeuvres. There were large decanters containing vodke, a liquor something like Chinese rice-brandy.