Kan Wong gained the
signing table. Picking up the brush, he set his name, the name of one
of the Dragon's blood, to the contract, accepted a duplicate, and
stepped back into the waiting line.
His pay and his rations, he was told, would begin two days hence, when
he was to report to the fire junk now lying at the dock, awaiting the
human cargo of which he was a part. Kan Wong memorized the directions as
he turned away from his instructing countryman. Of the Foreign Devil he
took no further notice. Time enough for that when he passed into
service. The God of Luck had smiled upon his boldness, and, reflecting
upon it Kan Wong turned back to the river and the sampan that had so
long been his floating home. No sentimental memories, however, clung
about it for him. Its freight of dreams he had landed here in Shanghai,
marketing them for a realization. The sampan now was but the empty shell
of a water beetle, that had crawled upon the bank into the sun of
Fortune to spill forth a dragon fly to try newly found wings of
adventure.
He found a customer, and, with much haggling after the manner of his
kind, disposed of his boat, the last tie, if tie there was, that bound
him to his present life. Waterman he had always been, and now had come
to him the call of the Father of All Waters. The tang of the salt in his
nostrils conjured up dreams as magical as those invoked by the wand of
the poppy god. Wrapped in their rosy mantle, he walked the streets for
the next two days, and on the third he took his way to the dock where
lay the fire junk that was to bear him forth into the wonders of the
Foreign Devils' land.
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