“I am not, indeed; I can see the mill quite plainly. And I suppose the Chinese really turn it into hashish?”
“Well, I suppose it is stolen and secretly converted into bhang or ganja first. I don’t exactly know what form it takes here, but I’ve seen bhang, and its results, in India. So has Gregory!” he added significantly.
“I wonder they are not found out.”
“It is so simple, you see. Bhang is only the dried leaves and stalks of the hemp, and if you heat it with water and butter I assure you that you get quite a surprising result! My own opinion is, though, that they are yet more diabolical down there in China Town, and dissolve the resin in rum; you can use any alcohol for the purpose, but the rum being at hand they would naturally take it.”
“And then they dance the carrab dance. I remember the pictures in the illustrated papers at the time of the rioting. Ally—I mean Captain Lewin—says they were quite wrong, but I found them sufficiently impressive. I should like to be that man down there, nevertheless—Burton, did you say his name was?—who is working with Mr. Gregory. I feel I want to have a hand in it too—to meddle, in fact. It has its advantages, being a man, though I seldom see them.”
“I thought that to be a pretty girl was the height of bliss,” said Halton, with his gentlest insinuation.
“So it is, until you meet with a prettier, perhaps,” said Chum. There was a flash of mirth in her eyes, and the deeper drift of the conversation passed away like the shadow of the clouds over the sugar-cane.
“I suppose we ought to turn back,” said Halton regretfully, as the sun’s warmth began to increase to undoubted heat and glare. “If I bring you home in the trying part of the day I shall expect to hear of it from Captain Lewin.”
Chum had loosened her rein, and Liscarton, with his lean head stretched out, was cropping an early breakfast on the hillside. Liscarton was always hungry—his sais calls it greedy—and the instant his rein was relaxed, he would wrench it through his rider’s hands and nose the ground for something to eat. Mrs. Lewin had already learned that he had a will of his own that threatened to take the skin off her fingers did she keep his head up when standing; and she loved him none the less. She could forgive wrong-headedness, but she found it very difficult to forgive docility when it meant laziness. She sat easily in her saddle, her right hand resting on the pony’s flank, her body turned that she might look down on China Town with those musing eyes that were green and dusk and lavender-grey by turns. And Alfred Halton watched her with fastidious appreciation, while by an irony of fate she thought definitely of the Administrator and his plans, and the ominous strength that was his attribute. A man to have as a friend—a power to reach to high places—yes, decidedly an influence to have for you rather than against you!
“Have you noticed the names in Key Island?” said Halton, as they gathered up the reins and rode their ponies slowly homeward over the Pass.