"Listen," said Ling. "Last night, had I wished, I might have killed you. I did not do so. The more fool I! And now, you have shot me. I am wounded, perhaps mortally--I cannot say."
"We are old enemies," said Cheong-Chau.
Ling laughed. In his laugh there was something of his old boisterous manner; but at the same time, it was manifest from his voice that he was already weak from loss of blood.
"The wolf," said he, "was never an enemy of the tiger, nor can the rat be the foe of the dog. You, Cheong-Chau, are vermin. I would lose all pride in myself, in my strength and dignity, if I killed you otherwise than with my hands."
A shudder ran through the thin frame of the brigand chief. He had lived a life of crime; he had sinned, time and again, against the gods and his fellow-men, but he was no coward; he had always known that, sooner or later, he must die a violent death.
He had thought that fate would bring him to the dreadful Potter's Yard, the public and official place of execution in the city of Canton. The inevitable conclusion of the West River pirate is the block. So Cheong-Chau was prepared to die.
"You will not torture me?" he asked.
"I would," said Ling, "if I meted out to you the fate you have more than once prepared for others. But I am no such fiend. Moreover, I have no time to spare. I go down-stream to-night on your own junk, with the ransom money that you thought was yours. I go where tide and current take me--perhaps to live for the remainder of my days upon the fatness of the earth; perhaps to find my way amidst the stars in search of the Unknowable."
"What do you mean?" asked the other.
"I mean that--for all I know--the sands of life are running out. The blood issues from my wound. It may be that the breath of life goes with it. And now, you die, by what strength remains in me."