murmuring below, I heard
a low babble of voices. No word was distinguishable, not even the
language, yet curiously the sound had a rhythm that I knew.

I have heard from a distance preaching in many languages. Though
only the cadences, the pauses, and rhythm reached me, I had no
difficulty in knowing their origin and meaning. Thought casts the
mold of all speech. Now my drowsy mind harked back to American days,
to scenes in homes and clubs.

I rose, and wrapping the loin-cloth about me, set out with a lantern
in search of that sound. It led me down the trail, across the brook,
and up the slope into the dense green growth of the mountain-side.
Beyond I saw lights in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai Oo.

My bare feet made no noise, and through the undergrowth I peered
upon as odd a sight as ever pleased a lover of the bizarre. A blaze
of torches lighted a cleared space among the tall palm columns, and
in the flickering red glow a score of naked, tattooed figures
crouched about a shining mat of sugar-cane. About them great piles
of yellow-boxed Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane
mat shone the red and white and black of the cards.

O Lalala sat facing me, absorbed in the game. At his back the yellow
boxes were piled high, his crutch propped against them, and
continually he speeded the play by calling out, "Passy, calley or
makum bigger!" "Comely center!" or, "Ante uppy!"

These were the sounds that had swept my memory back to civilization
and drawn me from my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of
poker--the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of
Shanghai--and evidently he had already taught his eager pupils that
patois.

They crouched about the mat, bent forward in their eagerness, and
the flickering light caught twisting mouths and eyes ringed with
tattooing. Over their heads the torches flared, held by breathless
onlookers. The candlenuts, threaded on long spines of cocoanut-leaves,
blazed only a few seconds, but each dying one lit the one beneath as
it sputtered out, and the scores of strings shed a continuous though
wavering light upon the shining mat and the cards.

The midnight darkness of the enclosing grove and the vague columns
of the palms, upholding the rustling canopy that hid the sky, hinted
at some monstrous cathedral where heathen rites were celebrated.

I pushed through the fringe of onlookers, none of whom heeded me,
and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches. T