A weary faintness made Emily's eyelids droop for a second. Chang leaped to his feet and crossed to the other side of the fire. She watched him where he lifted one of the boat's breakers and poured a cup full of water. He was back in a moment offering it to her. She drank sparingly. She refused to eat anything. She asked how long it had been since the sundering of the island and when Chang told her that not more than an hour had passed she found it hard to believe him. It seemed to Emily that it must have happened many nights before.
The giant's answer was hardly away from his lips when a shudder went through the hill on the crest of which he, driving Rowgowskii to help him, had fixed the encampment and rebuilt the fire.
"What flor? Whachamalla you?" snarled Chang at the menacing earth. The next breath brought a scolding tone into his quaint voice. "Him go-an be night velly long time, Mr. Islan'. More better you go-an sleep, eh?"
The whimsicality of this speech and the half-quizzical expression in Chang's face brought a faint smile to the lips of the white woman.
"You're a rare soul, Chang," she whispered.
"Him all same clay-zee, dlunken sailor man, this Mr. Islan'," the giant chattered on. He saw that he amused Emily. And always he spoke of the future certainly. So far as his speech and manner were concerned he might have been safe in port with a pleasant city in view instead of on the border line of the world beyond. Like Lavelle, he possessed the marvelous power of renewing one's faith.
Of his master the Chinaman spoke as the children of the Orient speak only of their strange good gods. He told how Lavelle nine years before in Rangoon had saved his life from the murderous hands of a drunken, mutinous crew and how his way thereafter had been the captain's way and would be to the end. He recalled, too, the night in Shanghai of which Elsie had told her. He wrung tears from her in recounting the fearful winning of the Kau Lung to Yokohama. She saw the knife scars on the arm lying outside the sail and the scars on Chang's. The wounds of these men assumed a sacredness in her eyes.
"My master all same Chang joss," was the way the giant summed up his hero. "No 'flaid flor enny-sling! Nobody! Him say, 'Chang, die.' Must flor me die."
Emily recalled the strange scene between them at the boat and she understood the truth of this.
Lavelle, stirring with a moan, interrupted the serang, who bent his head and listened, ear close to the unconscious man's lips.