Suddenly there was a rush of feet, a door flung open and Francisco entered, half dragging a Chinese woman by the arm. She gazed with frantic eyes from Alice to Robert till her glance took in the figure on the bed. She stared at it curiously, incredulously. Then she gave a little cry and flung herself toward Po Lun.
What she said no one there present knew. What strange cabal she invoked is still a mystery. Be that as it may, eyes which had seemed closed forever, opened. Lips white, bloodless, breathed a scarce-heard whisper.
"Hang Far!"
"Come," said Alice. "Let us leave them together."
Half an later, in an ante-room, the doctor told them: "He will live, I think. It's very like a miracle...."
At the foot of Brannan street lay the Pacific Mail docks, where the Chinese laborers were landed. Many thousands of them had been brought there by the steamers from Canton. They had solved vexed problems as house servants, fruit pickers, tillers of the soil; they had done the rough work in the building of many bridges, the stemming of turbulent streams, the construction of highways. And while there was work for all, they had caused little trouble.
Now half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks. They bore torches, which illuminated fitfully their flushed, impassioned faces. Here and there one carried a transparency described, "The Chinese Must Go."
