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"Let's see your hook," Whitey said, as another pickerel was pulled almost to shore, and then flopped back into its native element. When Injun displayed the hook, Whitey saw that it was one of the little ones they had used in fastening the tick-tack to Wong's window. "Why, this is too small for pickerel," exclaimed Whitey. "It's for perch. You ought to have a bigger one."
At dusk I quitted the streets, with their bazaar-like shops and strange illuminations, and made my way back to the port under escort of my Chinese friend, who with Oriental politeness insisted on seeing me safe back on board. A most unwelcome shock awaited me. No Columbia was to be found, and Lin Wong's inquiries elicited that she had left nearly an hour before.
But those who manned the weapons had passed on, back through the thick curtain of smoke that hung between them and the comparative safety of the rear. Kan Wong's eyes were ahead, striving to pierce the pungent veil that hid the enemy. Suddenly his keen eyes noted them the strange uniforms and stranger faces, ducking forward here and there through the hell of their own making.
There was another long pause in the bunk house, and nothing could be heard save the ticking of the alarm clock that was Wong's special property, on which he relied to give him his three a.m. call to get the punchers' breakfast ready by sunup. And then Injun spoke, he who rarely talked, save in monosyllables.
As the storm roared on, never ceasing, it stirred the Dragon's blood in Kan Wong's veins. The pick and shovel irked his hands as he swung them; his palms began to itch for the weapons that the soldiers bore. Now and then he came upon a gun where it had dropped from its owner's useless hands.
They went with much strange shouting and, to Kan Wong's ears, discordant sounds that they mistook for music. Yet now and then other strings of carriages came back from the east and north, with other men men broken, bloody, lacking limbs, groping in blindness, their faces twisted with pain as they were loaded into the waiting fire-junks to recross the rough sea.
Ever hear of Wong's? Opium, pearls, oils and shark-fins?" "No." "Not many do. I know Singapore like the lines on my hands. Wong is the shrewdest, most lawless Chinaman this side of Canton and Macao. Pipes, pearls and shark-fins. Did you know that the bay out there is so full of sharks that they have to stand on their tails for lack of space? Big money. Wong's the man to go to.
Outside the city on the road to Tali there is a loss on exchange varying according to your astuteness from 3 to 6 per cent. on the capital scale. There are two chief banks in Yunnan city. Wong's whose bank, the signboard tells us, is "Beneficent, Rich, United," and Mong's "Bank of the Hundred Streams," which is said to be still richer. With Mr.
Coming through the crowd, walking as though the concrete under him was pitching and rolling like a ship's deck on contragravity in a storm, was Bish Ware. He caught sight of us, waved, overbalanced himself and recovered, and then changed course to starboard and bore down on us. He was carrying about his usual cargo, and as usual the manifest would read, Baldur honey-rum, from Harry Wong's bar.
And drunk or sober though I never remembered seeing him in the latter condition he had the fastest reflexes of anybody I knew. I saw him, once, standing at the bar in Harry Wong's, knock over an open bottle with his left elbow. He spun half around, grabbed it by the neck and set it up, all in one motion, without spilling a drop, and he went on talking as though nothing had happened.
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