The white man, kneeling between the thwarts, began shouting orders and warnings. Chang, his thick cue streaming in the wind, his jaw set, his face as expressionless as a piece of parchment, seemed oblivious of what this white man did until he saw him start to heave his big form to a standing position. Then he hurled a curse at him that was like a blow—a curse learned of the sea and white men's lips.
But to the women the giant kept calling, "Bimeby him all go way!" and there was faith in his voice and it passed into their hearts. As often as the boat shuddered from an assault cheated of its death strength he abjured them to be unafraid. No white man could have been more gentle or thoughtful.
Through it all Emily Granville clung to Lavelle's hand as she had in the night. What the Chinaman had said kept forcing itself uppermost in her mind—if the man who lay across her lived, all would live.
Even as Chang had promised the boat passed out of the wreckage. The wind dropped suddenly and peace began its entrance into the sea's worried blue bosom. The sun, leaping to its day's work overhead, touched the boat with its warmth. Emily, following Chang's glance round the horizon, saw a speck away to leeward. It might be another boat he told her.
"Hi!" cried one of the coolies forward, pointing up to windward where the broken half of a boat went by.
"No good look him that way!" shouted Chang, but too late. Emily and Shanghai Elsie saw the grim sea grist and the body of a little boy in pajamas tangled in it. Their eyes met—the Magdalen's and hers of the sheltered life—and they wept together, cheek against cheek, in an understanding of woman's heritage of potential motherhood.
In the midst of Chang's tongue-lashing of the coolie who had discovered the wrecked boat, Lavelle stirred into consciousness. Elsie was the first to see his eyes open and stare upward blankly.
"Thank God he is living," she murmured. "Thank God!" and as she spoke he sat up with a start, tearing his hand from Emily's. He gazed round him wildly for a moment, his eyes finally settling on Emily with a gleam of recognition.
"You," he murmured in a tone of awe. Chang's chattering went unheeded. He passed a hand across his brow and at the touch the bullet wound over his temple began to bleed afresh. His head rocked with pain and he pressed it in both hands until it seemed that he must crush the skull.
"Don't, don't," Emily protested, but he did not hear her. "You would better——You are ill. Lie down again, please."