For a time Dixie stood by the square small window, looking out over the shining river toward the dim northern bank with its hills that seemed to drift at a snail's pace off astern. Her quick mind had never been farther from sleep. Her thin hands felt through her blouse the twisted ropes of pearls that were wound about her waist. Her lips were pressed tightly together. These pearls represented a fortune beyond even Dixie's calculating dreams. To keep them successfully hidden during the days, perhaps weeks to come of floating down the river in close companionship with these two strong observant men, and a half crazy American boy, and clever Oriental women, would test her resourcefulness and her nerve. Though she felt, ever, now, no doubt of the latter.... The thing was tremendous. Now that the confusion of the day and night were over with, she found a thrill in considering the problem, while her sensitive fingers pressed and pressed again the hard little globes. There were so many of them; such beauties, she knew, in form and size and color.... Never again would such an opportunity come to her. It was, precisely, if on the grandest scale imaginable, her sort of achievement. Tex was gone. The Kid was gone. No one could claim a share or a voice: it was all hers--wealth, power, even, perhaps, at the last, something near respectability. For money, enough of it, she knew, will accomplish even that. While on the other, hand, to fail now, might, would, spell a life of drab adventure along the coast, without even a goal, without a decent hope; with, always, the pitiless years gaining on her. She searched, tiptoeing, about the room, lantern in hand, for a place to hide her treasure; then reconsidered. In some way she must keep the pearls about her person; though not, as now, looped around her waist. An accidental touch there might start the fateful questioning. She put down the lantern; stood for a long time by the curtained door, listening. From up and down the passage came only the heavy breathing of exhausted folk. She slipped out cautiously; made her way to the sloping deck above--how vividly familiar it was!--tiptoed lightly aft, past the uncurious helmsman, around the huge coils of rope and the piled-up fenders of interwoven matting, out to the pleasant gallery where the flowers were. And then, as she stepped down and paused to breathe slowly, deeply, again the heavy-sweet perfume of the tuberoses, a boyish figure sprang up, with a nervous little gasp of surprise, from the steamer chair of Hong Kong grass.