The Washington times., 1913-07-07
CHAPTER I.
An Outside Room.

"HE general steamship agency on
the Bund was hive of bust
ling travellers, their faces alight
with the eagerness with which
they wished to be gone their many
ways up and down the world. A
stranger easily might have imagined
that most of Yokohamo's European or
white" population had been possessed
of sudden desire to fee Beyond the
seas.
II was scene common enough, how
ever for that season in-the gateways
of the Far East Spring, with its heart
call to distant homelands, had come
again to break the spell of the Orient
for many and to stir an unutterable
longing in the breasts of others-the
men and women who dream of the day
they will "go back" but who never
do.
crowds go, and not lacking in ric-
turesque touches-here where a Chi
nese of Mandarin rank went with silky
retinue; there where pair Of turbaned
soldier Sikhs stood near two begoggled
Korean priests. muttering in gutturals
over their tickets for the south. The
placidity and impenetrable calm Of
these few Oriental faces served but to
accentuate the mobile expressiveness of
the dominant Caucasian countenance.
Still there was one white man whose
features betrayed no expression of in
terest in the scene. He stood head and
shoulders over those around him in a
line Of applicants at booking desk to-
ward the rear. There was an air of
detachment about him Apparently he
was untouched of the spirit of mystic
restiessnes and excitement which per-
vaded the place-that undeniable, re-
sistless spirit which takes hold of even
the most unimaginative and lackadais
icsl in railway depots or wherever else
men in numbers set out upon Journeys.
There was no gleam of the homeward
bound in his eye-that CLEAN which is
more like the light of love than any
thing else-there was no expectancy, no
sign of eagerness.
At the first glance this mans face
seemed no more than a mask. but at a
second one realized that the features
were those of one who must have won
unto the priceless possession OF self
control The nose was large and yet as
sensitively formed as the freshly shaven
Nps and chin. The ears were perfectly
lobed-the ears Of a thoroughbred. The
Jaw was that of the natural tighter.
sharp, straight line from the hinge to
the point.
the eyelids, which come from facing
long distances on sea or land, kept
forming and reforming as his gray eyes
idly wandered over the heads of the
crowd. 1t is thus that the tribe of the
earth's big space Is marked.
Several times he pushed his small,
gray felt hat back from his brow. and
then as absently pulled IL down again.
When he did this one saw the seam of
a Jagged scar, still pink from recent
healing. which traversed the left tenn
pie and disappeared in the dark brown
hair over the ear. Although the fore
lock and the temples were quite gray.
he was not more than thirty-five years
old.
His suit Of blue serge fitted well, and
the trimness of his setting up-his whole
bearing, in fact-spoke OF one Of mill
tary training. Perhaps ii was this sug-
gestion of the soldier that made the
Sikhs turn and look back at him as they
passed out on the Bund. Yet 1t was not
as a soldier that the port of Yokohama
knew him, but by the name of Whit
ridge and as the captain Of the sorriest
looking piece of seagrist that had ever
made Tokyo bay. A brute of Chinese
tramp she was. and men who knew
deep waters were still marveling how
he had brought her through the vitals
Of q typhoon-the worst In their MEN,
ory-which had swept the coast in a
fury Of destruction.
Chinese tramps and those who go
in them are of little moment. but on
the morning two months before that
the port had awakened to find in its
fairway a salt-crusted thing called
the Kau Lang. minus tunnels and
masts, and suggesting only vaguely
a steamship, and II knew that II
looked on one of the deep's wonders
The sea must have swallowed her
and spat her up again, and those who
said this had in mind that tramps
which fly the dragon cloth are the
Yet not only through stress of
storm had he weathered her, but