ot understand."

"That big blond chap behind the fourth torch. Yes, there. Sometime
I'll tell you about him. Picturesque duffer."

She could have shrieked aloud, but all she did was to draw in her
breath with a gasp that went so deep it gave her heart a twinge. Her
fingers tightened upon the teak-rail. Suddenly she knew, and was
ashamed of her weakness. It was simply a remarkable likeness, nothing
more than that; it could not possibly be anything more. Still, a ghost
could not have startled her as this living man had done.

"Who is he?"

"A chap named Warrington. But over here that signifies nothing; might
just as well be Jones or Smith or Brown. We call him Parrot & Co., but
the riff-raff have another name for him. The Man Who Never Talked of
Home. For two or three seasons he's been going up and down the river.
Ragged at times, prosperous at others. Lately it's been rags. He's
always carrying that Rajputana parrot. You've seen the kind around the
palaces and forts: saber-blade wings, long tail-feathers, green and
blue and scarlet, and the ugliest little rascals going. This one is
trained to do tricks."

"But the man!" impatiently.

He eyed her, mildly surprised. "Oh, he puzzles us all a bit, you know.
Well educated; somewhere back a gentleman; from the States. Of course
I don't know; something shady, probably. They don't tramp about like
this otherwise. For all that, he's rather a decent sort; no bounder
like that rotter we left at Mandalay. He never talks about himself. I
fancy he's lonesome again."

"Lonesome?"

"It's the way, you know. These poor beggars drop aboard for the night,
merely to see a white woman again, to hear decent English, to dress and
dine like a human being. They disappear the next day, and often we
never see them again."

"What do they do?" The question came to her lips mechanically.

"Paddy-fields. White men are needed to oversee them. And then,
there's the railway, and there's the new oil-country north of Prome.
You'll see the wells to-morrow. Rather fancy this Warrington chap has
been working along the new pipelines. They're running them down to
Rangoon. Well, there goes the last bag. Will you excuse me? The
lading bills, you know. If he's with us tomorrow, I'll have him put
the parrot through its turns. An amusing little beggar."

"Why not introduce him to me?"

"Beg pardon?"

"I'm not afraid," quietly.

"By Jove, no! But this is rather diff