Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

274 “He blood blothah,” Sing breathed, as his keen eyes noted my change of attitude. “Leave ship in Vlad’s’ok. Sir, can please do?” Slowly I shook my head. The words of Lieutenant Buckley came back to me. “They told us in Hankow that once you hear of the Society of Ancestral Loss, you hear and hear again.” He had told us what he knew. And not many months later came our experience with Tuck Cheong and the Sea of Ances- tral Fire. Now—was it to happen again? Too often, too often—and who could tell but that the society would levy horrid retri- bution upon us? This unfortunate lad here —he had known what he was doing. He must fully have realized the penalty. Deep- ly I pitied him; for his need of money must have been terrible indeed that he must needs damn his hope for eternity by the sale of his soul. Soulless, ancestorless, hopeless of past, present or future—condemned to die as a dog would die, and without even a dog’s hope! God! The horror of it to a believ- ing Chinese! But—were it well to risk our men, our ship, to save this bit of Chinese clay? Slowly I shook my head. Then, to ease my own conscience, I went to the wardroom mess treasurer. Together we knocked at the captain’s cabin, entered, and informed the captain of what I knew. But he, also, slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry for the lad,” he said. ‘As a human being I am proud of him as a man who has made what must have been an awful sacrifice. But as trustee of our men and ship, I cannot sanction his re- maining on board. We allowed it once— Tuck Cheong found new life in the waters ot the ower Yangste. This lad—no—no. We dare not risk the society’s anger. The lad is Chinese, and knows his people. But with the undercurrents of that people we cannot deliberately interfere. “ Our duty is to protect our own people. ‘And that protection we cannot risk. Sup- pose the society demanded a white life for the vellow one we would save! You see? Iam sorry. I may regret doing this. But ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. put the boy in a sampan, and let him leave the ship. Warn the watch to keep him off.” The boy left the ship in the same pa- thetic and resigned silence. My heart went out to him as he dropped in a heap on the sampan’s tiny deck—his hands close clenched upon his breast as he held the edges of his tattered blue jacket together in an effort to cover the brand that marked his hopeless plight. Then with a sigh I returned to my du- ties. We were here, as the captain had said, to care for our countrymen. A thou- sand unfortunate natives had tasted the so- ciety’s knife long ere most of us were born. And who were we to deviate from their purpose the gods of Chinese fate? After all, were we not simply suffered in this teeming land—and suffered only so long as we rode upon its placid seeming surface? Thousands of our countrymen dwelt far in the interior, lonely islands on a vast yellow sea. Was it well to disturb that sea? The lad was gone. And it was best that he should go. But what a destiny for him the gods had writ! And yet, thought I, the world is large and all manner and degrees of men must live as best they may upon it. Here was an example of the lowest, and—for the first time in two days there flashed upon the screen of my memory a picture I had tried to forget—and back there in the banquet room I had shaken the long, cool hand, and my eyes had fallen before the power of the green-black pupils, of one of the highest—the power behind the Chimo- Asiatique Banking Corporation—Kung Wo Tai. For some reason I shuddered. That man had power. We were the port side outboard ship of a group of three destroyers of our division moored bow and stern in the Whampoa. At four fifty the officer of the deck, my- self, reported to the captain that the main engines had been turned over—five min- utes later, that the lines which secured us to the center ship, whose anchor chain was linked through the ring of the buoy, had been singled up. And when, at the stroke of two bells, comicboooks C©