His excellency appeared on deck during the second afternoon; greeted Doane in friendly fashion—looking oddly simple in his servant costume; blue gown, plain cloth slippers, skull-cap with a knot of vermilion silk. They walked the deck together; later, they sat on a coil of rope. In manner he was very nearly his old self; smiling a thought less, perhaps, but as humanly direct in his talk as a Chinese.
“We shall soon be parting, Grigsby Doane,” he remarked, “and I shall think much of you. Do you know yet where you shall go and what you shall do?”
“No,” Doane replied. “All I can do now is the next thing, whatever that may prove to be.”
“You will help China?”
“I shall hope for an opportunity.”
“You are, first and last, a Westerner.”
“I suppose that is true.”
“I did think you a philosopher, Griggsby Doane. So you seemed to me. Like our humble great, almost like Chuang Tzü himself. But in the moment of crisis your nature found expression wholly in action. At such times we of the East are likely to be negative. We are a static people. But you, like your own, are dynamic.”
This shrewd bit of observation struck Doane sharply. Come to think, it was true.
“At the critical moment you wasted not one thought in reflection. You weighed none of the difficulties; you ignored consequences. You took command. You acted. As a result—here we are.... I suppose you were right. At any rate, I yielded to your active judgment. It has saved my daughter.”