with the heavy
sweet of tropical fragrance. Between clouds at night, the stars broke
out more than ever brilliant and near, in the washed air. There were
moments when the sky appeared ceiled with phosphor, which a misty cloud
had just brushed and set to dazzling. Something in the soil made them
talk of girls--and Bedient drew forth for Cairns (to see the hem of her
garment)--a certain hushed vision named Adelaide.... At last, the Train
made Manila, wreck that it was, after majestic service; and the great
gray mantle, a sort of moveless twilight, settled down upon Luzon and
the archipelago. Within its folds was a mammoth condenser, contracting
to drench the land impartially, incessantly, for sixty days or more.
And now the fruition of the rice-swamps waxed imperiously; the carabao
soaked himself in endless ecstasy; the rock-ribbed gorges of Southern
Luzon filled with booming and treachery. Fords were obliterated.
Hundreds of little rivers, that had not even left their beds marked
upon the land, burst into being like a new kind of swarm; and many like
these poured into the Pasig, which swelled, became thick and angry with
the drain of the hills, the overflow of the rice-lands, and the filth
and fever-stuff of the cities. At last, the constant din of the rain
became a part of the silence.

FOURTH CHAPTER

THAT ADELAIDE PASSION

Andrew Bedient did not call at all these Asiatic and insular ports and
continue to meet only men. Indeed, he did not fail to encounter those
white women who follow men to disrupted places, where blood is upon the
ground,--nor those native women inevitably present. A man fallen to the
dregs usually finds a woman to keep him company, but it is equally true
that man never climbs so high that, looking upward, he may not see a
woman there.

A little before the _Truxton's_ last voyage, the clipper had remained
in port for a fortnight at Adelaide, New South Wales. A woman in that
city was destined to mean a great deal to the boy of seventeen.... It
would be very easy to say that here was a creature whose way is the way
of darkness. The striking thing is that Adelaide (in the thoughts of
Bedient afterward, she gradually appropriated the name of her city) did
not know she was evil.... Such a woman, it is curious to note, has
appeared in the boyhood of many men of power and eminent equipment.

Adelaide was small and fragrant. Though formerly married, she was true
to her kind in being childless. A