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Updated: May 4, 2025
Heywood answered impatiently from his bedroom. "Nothing safe in this world, Mr. Hackh. User's risk." An inaudible mutter ended with, "Keep clean, anyway." At breakfast, though the acrid smoke was an enveloping reminder, he made the only reference to their situation. "Rain at last: too late, though, to flush out the gutters. We needed it a month ago.
Two revolvers: my Webley.450, and that little thing of Nesbit's, which is not man-stopping. Shot-guns? Every one but you, padre: fit only for spring snipe, anyway, or bamboo partridge. Hackh has just taken over, from this house, the only real weapons in the settlement one dozen old Mausers, Argentine, calibre.765. My predecessor left 'em, and three cases of cartridges.
You know, I was afraid you might just see Rudie Hackh." The rebeck wailed a long complaint before he added: "If I didn't like you fairly well The point is Good old Cynthia! That bally orb may not see one of us to-morrow night, next week, next quarter. 'Through this same Garden, and for us in vain. Every man Jack. Let me explain. It will make you better company."
Oh, and Hackh; your efforts to-night Well, few men would have dared, and I feel immensely grateful." He disappeared among the orange trees, leaving Rudolph to think about such gratitude. "Now, then," called Heywood, and stooped to the white bundle at their feet. "Don't stand looking. Can't be helped. Trust old Gilly to take it like a man. Come bear a hand."
"Dispatches for Rudolph Hackh?" he inquired, twisting up his blond moustache, and trying to look insolent and peremptory, like an employer of men. "There are none, sir," answered an amiable clerk, not at all impressed. Abashed once more in the polyglot street, still daunted by his first plunge into the foreign and the strange, he retraced his path, threading shyly toward the Quai François Joseph.
"Captain Kneepone he has gifen her, when she iss all op inside for him. I haf rebaired, but she blay only one song yet. A man does not know, Herr Hackh, what he may be. Once I haf piano, and viola my own, yes, and now haf I diss small, laffing, sick teufel!" He rose, and faced Heywood with a trembling, passionate gesture. "But diss yong man, he stand by der oldt fellow!"
The players, however, advanced in a more friendly fashion. The Englishman, whose name Rudolph did not catch, shook his hand heartily. "Mr. Hackh is a welcome addition." He spoke with deliberate courtesy. Something in his voice, the tired look in his frank blue eyes and serious face, at once engaged respect. "For our sakes," he continued, "we're glad to see you here.
The missionary approached smiling, but like a man who has finished the day's work. "That fellow Good-evening: and welcome to our Street Chapel, Mr. Hackh That fellow," he glanced after the retreating figure, "he's a lesson in perseverance, gentlemen. A merchant, well-to-do: he has a lawsuit coming on notorious and tries to join us for protection.
But for all this, Rudolph Hackh felt young, homesick, timid of the future, and already oppressed with the distance, the age, the manifold, placid mystery of China. Toward that mystery, meanwhile, the ship began to creep. Behind her, houses, multi-colored funnels, scrubby trees, slowly swung to blot out the glowing Mediterranean and the western hemisphere.
At the foot of the ladder, they met a man in white, with a white face in what might be the dawn, or the pallor of the late-risen moon. "Is Hackh there?" He hailed them in a dry voice, and cleared his throat, "Where is she? Where's my wife?" It was here, accordingly, while Heywood stooped over a tumbled object on the ground, that Rudolph told her husband what Bertha Forrester had chosen.
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