"Good-morning, Ah Sing," Peter Gross remarked happily, as he mounted the colonnade.
The tiny slits through which Ah Sing beheld the pageantry of a sun-baked world opened a trifle wider.
"May Allah bless thee, Mr. Gross," he greeted impassively.
Peter Gross pulled a chair away from one of the other tables and placed it across the board from Ah Sing. Then he succumbed to it with a sigh of gentle ease.
"A hot day," he panted, and fanned himself as though he found the humidity unbearable.
"Belly hot," Ah Sing gravely agreed in a guttural voice that sounded from unfathomable abysses.
"A hot day for a man that's tasted no liquor for nigh three months," Peter Gross amended.
"You makee long trip?" Ah Sing inquired politely.
Peter Gross's features molded themselves into an expression eloquently appreciative of his past miseries.
"That's altogether how you take it, Ah Sing," he replied. "From Frisco to Melbourne to Batavia isn't such a thunderin' long ways, not to a man that's done the full circle three times. But when you make the voyage with a Methodist captain who doesn't believe in grog, it's the longest since Captain Cook's. Ah Sing, my throat's dryer than a sou'east monsoon. Hot toddy for two."