lf to a slow
growing atoll. From there he worked his way inshore, crawling over the
craft that stretched out from the low banks as a water beetle might move
over the flotsam and jetsam caught in the back-water of a sluggish
stream. Once in the narrow, crowded streets of the city itself, he
roamed aimlessly, open-eyed to its wonders, dreamily observant. Out of
the native quarter and into the foreign section he moved, accustoming
himself to these masters of mystery whom he was about to serve, calling
sluggish memory to his aid as his cars strove to reconstruct The meaning
of the barbarous jargon.

Into the quarter where the Foreign Devils and the native population came
together to barter and to trade, he strayed one day. A Foreign Devil in
a strangely unattractive uniform was addressing a crowd of coolies in
their own tongue. Kan Wong attached himself to the outer edge of the
impassively curious throng, his ears alert, his features, as ever, an
imperturbable mask. The foreign officer, for such he seemed to be, was
making an offer to the assemblage for contract labour: one dollar a day,
with rice, fish, and tea rations, for work in a foreign land. Kan Wong
translated the money quickly into _yens_. The sum seemed incredible to
him. What service would he not perform for such payment? Why, within a
year, or two at the very most, with careful frugality, he might return
and buy himself a junk worthy of his Dragon dreams of the river. And
then ...

The officer talked on, persuading, holding out the glittering lure of
profit and adventure. Kan Wong listened eagerly. He had thought there
was a ban on contract labour, but perhaps this new Republican
Government, so friendly to the Foreign Devil, had removed it. Surely one
who wore the uniform of a soldier and an officer could not thus publicly
solicit coolies without the sanction of the mandarins, or escape their
notice.

Kan Wong studied the crowd. It contained a few Chinese soldiers, who
were obviously keeping order. He was satisfied, and edged his way closer
to the speaker. There, already, ranged to one side was a line of his own
kind, jabbering to a Celestial who put down their names on slips of rice
paper and accepted their marks, which they made with a bamboo brush,
that they bonded themselves to the adventure. Kan Wong gained the
signing table. Picking up the brush, he set his name, the name of one
of the Dragon's blood, to the contract, accepted a duplicate, and
stepped