"Nor I; this life is good." Hi John lighted another cigarette. "Still, consider duty! Lim Tock is a terrible man. It was he who sank the Dutch steamer last year, before his son was hung. His son helped him. They each got two Dutch women and much money. If we do not join him, Li, I think that we shall both swallow gold."
"Yes. Then you join him."
"Oh, no." Hi John's singsong tones were soft. "Oh, no! I did not mean that."
Li Fu looked slightly ironic. "You think this ship worth dying for? Or those white women beautiful enough to die for?"
"Not at all," said Hi John. "The ship is a rotten hulk. The women are ugly and pale as ghosts. I care nothing what becomes of either. At the same time, I revere the wisdom of my paternal parent, who was also an officer in a ship. Before he swallowed gold, he asked me to take an oath, that I would never swerve from my duty. Therefore I cannot well join Lim Tock, since I undertook a certain duty aboard this ship."
"That is true," said Li Fu. "I have no oath to restrain me, but my duty needs no oath. Therefore I agree with you fully. I shall get my revolver, and also yours, while you are on the bridge; I have had it two rice-years, but it is a good one."
"Very well," said Hi John. "Give me mine when you have the opportunity."
While these two men talked on the bridge-deck, Lim Tock, the super-cargo, walked aft on the main-deck, past the dingy passenger-cabins where the brood of Abdullah swarmed about the two "missionary ladies." Lim Tock was an elderly Straits Chinaman, with a short, gray mustache, a drawn, parchment face, and two bright and glittering gray eyes—a most amazing pair of eyes to be staring from a saffron face! Yet some Chinese are gray-eyed.
In the stern, he came upon Abdullah, the Arab merchant, who was reading a Koran. The Arab looked up, smiled slightly, and spoke in the Low Malay which most men use in the island seas. This Slave of God was a thin and deadly looking person, fierce with his hook nose and jutting shreds of beard and jetty eyes.
"All is arranged?"