She could not take her eyes, during a long period, from the hideous object on the pole. Her over-stimulated thoughts were reaching quickly, sharply, far in every direction. The feeling came, grew into belief, that she was, mysteriously, out of her danger. She felt the ropes of pearls under her blouse with an ecstatic little catch of the breath; and (finally) letting her eyes drop to that other ugly object on the steps beneath her, slowly opened her bag, drew out the bracelet watch (that the Manila Kid had given her out of an absurd hope) and fastened it about her wrist. And her eyes were bright with triumph. CHAPTER X--YOUTH |THERE came for his excellency, as the sun mounted the sky, a large junk of his own river fleet--great brown sails flapping against the five masts of all heights that pointed up at crazily various angles, pennons flying at each masthead, hull weathered darkly, mats and fenders of woven hemp hung over the poop-rail, and a swarming pigtailed crew at the sweeps and overside on the spunson and hard at the tracking ropes as the _tai-kung_ screamed from the bow and the _laopan_ shouted from the poop. They were ferried aboard in the small boat, Kang with his daughters and his suite and servants, a handful of pitifully wailing women, young Kane and Griggsby Doane. Then the trackers cast off from the shore and the mooring poles, the sweeps moved, and with the _lao pan_ musically calling the stroke the junk moved laboriously up-stream toward the home of his excellency's ancestors. Crowded into the uninviting cabins the weary travelers sought a few hours of rest. Even the servants and the mourning women, under the mattings forward, fell swiftly asleep. Only Rocky Kane, his eyes staring widely out of a sensitively white face, walked the deck; until the thought--a new sort of thought in the life of this headstrong youth--that he would be disturbing those below drove him aft, out beyond the steersman to the over-hanging gallery. Here he sat on the bamboo rail and gazed moodily down at the tireless, mighty river flowing off astern.