Dragon's blood

hey sat on the coolest corner in Port Said, their table commanding both the cross-way of Chareh Sultan el Osman, and the short, glaring vista of desert dust and starved young acacias

nland, their long tunics stiff with coal-dust, like a band of chain-mailed Crusaders lately caught in a hurricane of powdered charcoal. Athwart them, Parisian gowns floated past on stout Italian forms; hulking third-class Australians, in shirtsleeves, slouched along toward their

m, trotting, capering, yelping cheerfully: "Mista Ferguson!--polish, finish!--can-can--see nice Frencha girl--Mista McKenzie, Scotcha fella from Dublin--smotta picture--

ticing the uncertain military walk of the young man's clumsy legs, his

are. And they let the young Teuton

l noise and smells, jostled by the races of all latitudes and longitudes, surrounded and solitary, unheeded

sting up his blond moustache, and trying to look

answered an amiable cle

g of the dinghy, and steered a landsman's course along the shining Canal toward the black wall of a German mail-boat. Cramping the Arab's oar along the iron side, he bumped the landing-stage. Safe on deck, he became in a moment stiff and haughty, greeting a fellow passenger here and ther

ed the thought that he, clerk at twenty-one, was now agent at twenty-two, and traveling toward a house with servants, off there beyond the turn of the Canal, beyond the curve o

rranean and the western hemisphere. Gray desert banks closed in upon her strictly, slid gently astern, drawing with them to the vanishing-point the bright lan

ening tally of their departure, and tried to quote appropriate farewells, he was d

e of her search-light along arsenically green cardboard banks, Rudolph paced the deck in a mood much simpler and more honest. In vain he tried the half-baked philosophy of youth. It gave no comfo

t, of a pale blue surface stretched before aching eyes, and paler strips of pink and gray coast, faint and

Colombo came to dinner, he heard behind him the swish of stiff skirts, felt some one brush

d her subside with little flouncings, and felt his ears grow warm and red. De

very charming, with a demure downcast look, and a deft control of her spoon that, to Rudolph's eyes, was splendidly fastidious; at th

-wing ears, vexed at his own boldness. "I have been offensive. She laughs at me." He generalized fro

an aura of the Far East and of romance. He shot many a look toward her deck-chair that evening, and when she had gone below, strategically bought a ci

le but manly. At all events, homesickness had vanished in a curious impatience for the morrow. Miss Forrester: he would sit beside Miss Forrester at table. If only th

ement, he remained silent and wo

saying, in a pleasant, rather drawling voice. Her eyes were

however, he regained that painful mastery of the tongue which had won his promotion as

h a smile as no woman had ever troubled to bestow on hi

rs were penetrating the tumultuous secret of his breast. Again his English deserted, and left him stammering. But Miss Forrester chatted steadily, appeared to understand murmurs which he himself found obscure, and so restored his confidence that before tiffin

, trim and dashing; her round blue eyes, filled with coy wonder, the arch innocence of a spoiled child; her pale, smooth cheeks, rather plump, but coming oddly and enticingly to a point at the mouth and tilted chin; her lips, somewhat too full, too red, but quick and whimsical: he saw these all, and these only, in a bright focus, listening meanwhile to a voice by turns

uriosity alone had led her to travel second-class, "for the delightful change, you know, from all such formality"; and that she was "really more French than English." Her

?" she had said, as th

wondering whether he could claim this u

lained, smiling, "it is your

ly, blushing. He would have

e little monsters," sh

he ship throbbed in unison with his excited thoughts. He was amazed at his happy recklessness. He would never see h

from Singapore. That veiled brightness, as they leaned on the rail, showed her brown hair fluttering dimly, her face pale, half real, half magical, her eyes dark and undefined pools of mystery. It wa

ddenly, gravely, as though they had been isolated

what?" rejoined

eloquent little gesture to

aid. "Of t

e, subdued and musical, conveyed in the mere words the

-a musty store, dead and pedantic, after the thrilling spirit of her words. "Why, I think--it is--is it not all no

laughter s

cried. "What a highly

toward him that curiously tilted point of chin and mouth, her eyes shadowy and mocking. She

y hard?" she coaxed. "Isn't i

heard, and recognized

ed, "it lasts such

or of her face, the darkness of her eyes shining up at him. All his life seemed to have rus

eck behind them; an unwelc

advanced with a roguish, paternal

wonder, how her face changed from a bitter frown to the most friendly smile.

or is too much moo

or shipwreck. Mrs. Forrester? why, then--When the doctor, after ponderous pl

ue?" he dema

th baby eyes of wonder, which

lph's voice trembled. "The t

ourse," sh

tell me!" he be

a sudden she laughed, and raised a tantalizing face, merry, candid, and inscrutable. "Why, you never asked me, an

t night it was no Prussian snores which kept him awake and wretched. "Everything is finished," he thoug

s, worked quarreling with harsh cries, in unspeakable interweaving uproar. The air, hot and steamy, smelled of strange earth. As Rudolph foll

ached him. The injured wonder in he

tiffly, managed to add, "A pleasant voyage," and pas

oliage, ponderous and drooping; of half-naked barbarians that squatted in the shallow caverns of shops; innumerable faces, black, yellow, white, and brown, whirling past, beneath other tarpaulin hoods, or at carriage windows, or s

bells. Pig-tailed men in skull-caps, their faces calm as polished ivory, were counting dollars endlessly over flying finger-tips. One of these m

nterpretation ran; "take hi

nificant. It did not matter. One consolati