"You are leaving me—leaving me—for her—for Eileen!"
Peter made no reply. He continued his laborious climb; first one foot, then a groping few inches upward along the hard rope with his right hand, and then the other foot. Nor did he once again look down.
He finally gained the deck. It was blazing with incandescent and arc-lights. Under-officers and deckhands were pacing about, giving attention to the loading. Donkey engines hissed, coughed, and rattled, as the yellow booms creaked out, up and in with their snares of bales and crates which vanished like swooping birds of prey into the noisy hatchways.
Peter took in the bustling scene with a long sigh of relief. He still heard that lonely, anguished voice; the black sampan still rested on his eyes, heaving on the flood tide upon which the great ship strained, as if eager to be gone. And out there—out there—beyond the black heart of mystery and the night, was the clean dawn—the rain-washed spaces of the shimmering sea.
But he could not look down again. He would not. For a while—or forever—he had had his fill of China. Before him now lay the freedom of the open sea, the sunshine of life—and his homeland!
Peter the Brazen had drunk all too indulgently at the bitter fountain.
CHAPTER XVI
In the months which had passed since their romantic parting on the bund at Shanghai, Peter the Brazen had founded all of his roseate notions of Eileen Lorimer upon the one-sided data furnished by those spirited few hours.
He had thought of her as a lonely little creature, sole inhabitant of a world apart, to which he would some time go and claim her.