"All aboard!" rang out in English and Chinese. Men sprang to the hawsers to cast off. At that instant a sedan chair, with sweating bearers on the run, reached the dock and was dropped at the end of the gang plank. An unusually pretty Chinese girl of seventeen or eighteen years, richly dressed, and bearing in her arms a child of a few months old, stepped hastily out of it, and ran for the gangway as fast as her bound feet would carry her. One look at the child was enough to learn its story. Almost as dark as a Chinese in complexion, the features were distinctly European. It was a Eurasian, the child of a European father and an Asiatic mother.
At the sight of the sedan chair Carteret had turned abruptly from the group on deck, and had run down the ladder. The next instant his voice was heard by those who leaned on the rail, speaking, not loudly, but in tones of restrained fury.
"Put that woman off. Don't let her on board this boat," uttered to the accompaniment of savage oaths.
"Stand back, Mr. Carteret. It is not for you to say who will be a passenger on this boat. This woman has money to pay her passage, and she has the same rights as you have. Make way there."
It was McLeod's voice, clear and cold and hard as steel.
Sinclair and Miss MacAllister did not look at each other for some moments. The others on the deck heard only very imperfectly what was said below. Some of the men talked continuously and loudly, so that the women might not hear. When Miss MacAllister's eyes did meet Sinclair's, they had in them such a look of confidence and content that the memory of it never faded from his mind.
There was no opportunity for them to speak such farewells as their hearts craved. Once she had the chance to whisper,
"I'll be thinking of you, Donald, and you'll be thinking of me."
"I'll be thinking of you, Donald, and you'll be thinking of me"