“Very well,” she said then; and raised her arms above her head. Swiftly, at once, he began stripping off the festoons of pearls. The only other thing said was her remark, in a casual tone: “It's understood that you're using force. And you'll hear from it, of course.” As soon as he had gone she slipped into her blouse and skirt. Once again she looked thoughtfully at the radiant gems that were left to her; then went, coolly swinging the little bag, up on deck, where certain of the crew were already drawing around to the ladder at the side the sampan that had been towing astern. Rocky had gone directly, on tiptoe, to Doane's cabin. The huge sad-faced man was there; quick, however, with a kindly smile. Rocky said--“I beg your pardon, sir?”--stiffly, not unlike a proud young Briton--and from a tied-up handkerchief and bulging pockets--even from his shirt above his tightly drawn belt--produced enormous quantities of perfectly matched large pearls; laid them on the bed in a heap; helped Mr. Doane make a bundle of them in a square of blue cloth. “They are yours, sir,” he explained. He withdrew then, with a coldness of manner that to the older man was moving; and went out on deck to await his turn in the sampan. Doane found a temporary home for Hui Fei and her sister at the mission compound of his friend, Doctor Henry Withery, in the Chinese city; himself lodging with other friends. Rocky went to the Astor House, across Soochow Creek, which was still, in 1911, a famous stopping place for the tourists, diplomats, military and commercial men, and all the other more prosperous among the white travelers that pour into Shanghai from everywhere else in the world by the great ships that plow unceasingly the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Yellow and China Seas; to pour out again (in peaceful times) from Shanghai by rail and by lesser craft of the river and the coast to Hong Kong and Manila to Hankow, to Tientsin and Peking, to Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohoma and Tokio.... and Shanghai had never been so crowded as now, with its thousands of travelers detained, awaiting news from this or that revolutionary center; with the American Marines and the British and German sailors; with Manchu refugees swarming into the foreign settlements; with revolutionists, queueless, wearing unaccustomed European dress, parading everywhere. Doane found time to call at the hotel and leave word regarding the burial of his excellency; but was not to know that Rocky, himself, immured in his room, gave the word that he was out and there awaited the friendly chit that Doane sent up by the blue-robed servant. Nor was he to know that the boy dressed carefully for the ceremony, only to find the ordeal too great for his overstrung emotions. It was as an afterthought, a day or two later that Doane sent him Hui Fei's address.