He took a sampan at the harbor-front and went aboard the transport. Ferry, the Sickles quartermaster, was a tall, lean man with a shut smile that drooped. The face was a pinched and diminished Mergenthaler, and brought out the clouds and the manias of Morning’s mind.
Were all quartermasters the same? What had become of men? Had the world lost interest in monster heroisms? Ferry did not help him—on the contrary, stood looking down with the insolence of superior inches. Morning found himself telling about the sorrel mare. That would not do. He returned to the main fact that he had the big story and must get across the Pacific with it.
“I can’t take you——”
Morning heard it, but couldn’t believe. He tried to tell about the Hun huises and the loss of the manuscript, the walk to Koupangtse——
“Really—it’s no affair of mine. I can’t take you on.... The Coptic is sailing——”
And just now Mr. Reever Kennard appeared on the deck. The summer had added portliness. He was in flannels—a spectacle for children and animals.... The insignificance of all about was quickened when Mr. Reever Kennard appeared. The decks were less white, sailors, soldiers more enlisted. John Morning became an integer of the Tungsheng’s deck-passage again, and the lining of his nostrils retained the reek of it.
“How do you do, Mr. Kennard?” he said. His back was different. He felt a leniency there, very new or very ancient, as he turned to Ferry, adding: “This gentleman knows me. We parted in Tokyo this Spring, when I went over with the Russians. I met him long ago in the Philippine service. He will tell you——”
Ferry’s face grew suddenly saturnine, his eyes held in the glance of the famous correspondent’s.
“You’ll please count it closed—I can’t take you.”
Morning now turned to Kennard, who was sealing with his tongue a little flap of cigar-wrapper which may have prevented the perfect draught. Morning bowed and moved aft, where the dust of the coaling was thick, and the scores of natives, women and men, who handled the baskets, were a distraction which kept the reality from stifling him. Presently he went ashore and it was noon.... He could not understand Kennard; could not believe in an American doing what Ferry had done, to a man who had the big story of Liaoyang. It was some hideous mistake; he had not been able to make himself understood.