n
they grow tired of us they will throw us out. You're doing the right
thing. Stick to it. Stand them off. Command respect, respect for all
of us--"

The last was barely audible, for by this time the _ki-sang_ had stuffed
his mouth to speechlessness.

As I have said, I had the will and the fearlessness, and I racked my sea-
cuny brains for the wit. A palace eunuch, tickling my neck with a
feather from behind, gave me my start. I had already drawn attention by
my aloofness and imperviousness to the attacks of the _ki-sang_, so that
many were looking on at the eunuch's baiting of me. I gave no sign, made
no move, until I had located him and distanced him. Then, like a shot,
without turning head or body, merely by my arm I fetched him an open,
back-handed slap. My knuckles landed flat on his cheek and jaw. There
was a crack like a spar parting in a gale. He was bowled clean over,
landing in a heap on the floor a dozen feet away.

There was no laughter, only cries of surprise and murmurings and
whisperings of "Yi Yong-ik." Again I folded my arms and stood with a
fine assumption of haughtiness. I do believe that I, Adam Strang, had
among other things the soul of an actor in me. For see what follows. I
was now the most significant of our company. Proud-eyed, disdainful, I
met unwavering the eyes upon me and made them drop, or turn away--all
eyes but one. These were the eyes of a young woman, whom I judged, by
richness of dress and by the half-dozen women fluttering at her back, to
be a court lady of distinction. In truth, she was the Lady Om, princess
of the house of Min. Did I say young? She was fully my own age, thirty,
and for all that and her ripeness and beauty a princess still unmarried,
as I was to learn.

She alone looked me in the eyes without wavering until it was I who
turned away. She did not look me down, for there was neither challenge
nor antagonism in her eyes--only fascination. I was loth to admit this
defeat by one small woman, and my eyes, turning aside, lighted on the
disgraceful rout of my comrades and the trailing _ki-sang_ and gave me
the pretext. I clapped my hands in the Asiatic fashion when one gives
command.

"Let be!" I thundered in their own language, and in the form one
addressee underlings.

Oh, I had a chest and a throat, and could bull-roar to the hurt of ear-
drums. I warrant so loud a command had never before cracked the sacred
air of the Emperor's palace.