She saw the General standing on the shore in the midst of the soldiers who had hesitatingly, even apparently good-humoredly, closed around him, leaving only an opening on the side of the water, where he could not now escape. No one had touched him. He stood still, head bent a little forward, searching the darkness for Mr. Shultz, for Megan, who were abandoning him. The light of the solitary lantern shone on his hair ruffled into an unaccustomed disorder. He looked young, fugitive, afraid. She could not see his eyes but she felt sure they were fixed now on her, she felt they were asking her for something, for what she had always promised him, her medicine, her courage, her salvation. Now was her last chance. One word would give it all to him. One word would save him. But what word? Only a low cry escaped from her lips, an inarticulate dim signal of one human creature to another. But the General must have heard. He lifted his head, suddenly erect, and Megan saw that with one hand he nervously, but with dignity, with a final necessity for decorum, smoothed back his ruffled hair. The small boy poled, the current caught the sampan and drew it from the shore. There was only a tangle of struggling figures now on the bank. Some one knocked the lantern into the water and night swirled over Megan. The General was gone. [Illustration: Chapter XXIV headpiece] CHAPTER XXIV The little coast steamer rolled laboriously up to Shanghai. Mr. Shultz got a deck chair and dragged it forward so that Megan, who was very seasick, could get the breeze. She lay back with her eyes closed, trying by will power to hold off nausea. Mr. Shultz sat beside her. He told her about a scheme he had to get up radio programs in Shanghai, for broadcasting to the Chinese, make the Chinese firms do it as advertising. When it got cold he put his coat over her, and once he gave her a swallow of brandy with disastrous results. Gradually he stopped talking and finally sat looking at her with clouded eyes. He could not entirely forgive her for having been there. It was her presence that had prevented his taking a chance on getting the General off. Of course he had to save a white lady but he had wanted to save the General too. When he thought of how he had been obliged to watch the General's end he was filled with an enormous despondency and helplessness. "Well, they got him," he would repeat to himself, "they got him, the sons of bitches." Then he would call the Chinese steward again. "Boy, you catch whisky soda, chop chop." Megan, turning in her chair, saw his head nodding forward.