“I don't mean that. It's other things too.” His voice broke, but after a moment he pressed on, a determined look on his curiously youthful face. “I've done every rotten thing I could think of. I'm--well, I guess I'm just a criminal. No, listen--please! It's true. I'm to blame for this awful fire--smoking opium in my cabin. It was my lamp--it must have been. I fell asleep. But I knew better, of course.... Oh, God, it's terrible! All those lives, all this suffering! And you--I've nearly killed you--when it was you....” Here, creditably, he caught himself. “Don't think I'm talking wildly. I'm getting at something. Seeing you, meeting you--and now, this--well, I've never seen anybody like you. It's bowled me off my feet. I know what love is, now--Oh, please! I've got to get this out. I love you. I'm crazy about you. I can say that because pretty soon that boat'll come and you'll go and I'll never see you again. It's right, too! I've got to start again--alone and prove that there's good stuff in me somewhere...” “I'm ver' tire',” she murmured wistfully; and resting her head on the rolled-up waistcoat she lay still. If she had only let him finish! There had been something--some point--he was getting at. He hadn't meant to tire her or hurt her.... When the tall eunuch came for the little princess he angrily drove the fellow away. For Hui Fei was sleeping now, peacefully, like the warm little child in his arms. An English gunboat was the first relief craft to arrive; in the cool dawn; a tiny craft, built for the river, with a white freeboard low as a monitor's and bridge structure forward of the thin high funnel. The small boat that came ashore made a number of trips, taking off the passengers and the surviving white officers of the _Yen Hsin_. His excellency refused, with calm courtesy, to set foot on the English gunboat that was built for the river; he would wait for the junk that had been sent for. Dawley Kane found his son, nodding, with the picturesquely-clad child in his arms. The boy, glancing at the sleeping Hui Fei whose head rested comfortably on the rolled-up waistcoat, gave the child now to the patiently waiting eunuch, then fairly dragged his father to the boat. With the Japanese, Kato, and oddly distant to the big mate and the suddenly exotic-appearing viceroy in his richly embroidered satins who had been after all only casually, for a few days, in their lives, they embarked. They had nearly reached the gunboat when those on the bank heard young Kane's voice raised in hot protest. There was a moment of argument; then a splash. The boy could be seen then swimming back to shore. And Dawley Kane, turning his back, went on to the gunboat, stepped aboard, and disappeared. Rocky clambered, dripping, up the bank; came straight to Duane, a staring, exhausted youth, very white.