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Presently Milburgh was stripped to the waist, and Ling Chu regarded his handiwork complacently. He went to a cupboard in the wall, and took out a small brown bottle, which he placed on a table by the side of the bed. Then he himself sat upon the edge of the bed and spoke.
Before Milburgh knew what was happening, he was lying on the floor, face downwards, with Ling Chu's knee in the small of his back. He felt something like a wire loop slipped about his wrists, and suffered an excruciating pain as the Chinaman tightened the connecting link of the native handcuff. "Get up," said Ling Chu sternly, and, exerting a surprising strength, lifted the man to his feet.
While Madame Wang mentioned, with eyes bathed in tears, the name of Chia Chu, every one listened with composure, with the exception of Li Kung-ts'ai, who unable to curb her feelings also raised her voice in sobs. As soon as Chia Cheng heard her plaints, his tears trickled down with greater profusion, like pearls scattered about.
We never clearly knew HOW it happened; but when I picked up my neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall rail, and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way, and was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other stall.
I only know that after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other. I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two towards her.
Ocuna de Chu took the road to Lao, but seeing that he did not meet his king, or hear any news of him, resolved to go to Lanchan and ask for him. He continued his march, but suffered some pangs of hunger, for he had left the kingdom unprovided, and the way was long. On account of this some of his men deserted, but at last he reached Lanchan with ten armed praus.
Forgotten was the wraith of Leung Kai Chu, the jungle trail of Hallman, and even the trepidation with which we had awaited the sailing ship's boat. I was soon to be in those enchanted archipelagoes, and to see for myself those mighty swimmers and those sleepers upon the sea. I might even get a letter through that floating postmaster. There was a Continental duchess aboard, whom I pitied.
A matron presently returned with a box. "Lady Secunda," she reported, "says that you, lady Chu, and our young mistresses must not make fun of her for having asked for something to eat; and that in this box you'll find cakes made of water-lily powder, and rolls prepared with chicken fat, which your maternal aunt, on the other side, just sent for your ladyship and for you, young ladies, to taste.
Milburgh, with his perpetual smirk, his little stoop, his broad, fat face and half-bald head; Mrs. Rider, a pale ghost of a woman who flitted in and out of the story, or rather hovered about it, never seeming to intrude, yet never wholly separated from its tragic process; Ling Chu, imperturbable, bringing with him the atmosphere of that land of intrigue and mystery and motive, China.
Let go; let be; find rest of the mind and senses; let us have no more of these fooleries, war, capital punishment, ambition; let us have self- emptiness. Just be quiet, and this great Chu Hia will come right without aid of governing, without politics and voting and canvassing and such. Here and Now and What comes by were his prescriptions. He was an advocate of the Small State.
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