Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/121

 lived only in the present with its new, absorbing occupations.

It had been rumored about the ship, however, through those mysterious channels by which news runs, that the young Ingrams were bound on a quest of untold fortune appropriated by wily mandarins. Mark, laughingly denying this in the engineers' mess, met suddenly the narrow eyes of Chun Lon, the mess-boy, who was passing him the potatoes. Just a swift, inscrutable, black gleam—wholly impersonal—but somehow Mark felt all at once a cold, discouraging premonition of the kind of people he must deal with before he reached the descendants of T'ang Min and claimed his two hundred thousand taels. He spoke gloomily of his feeling to Alan, whom he met off watch that afternoon.

"Not like dealing with regular civilized people," he said. "That is, in some ways they're too civilized, if you know what I mean."

"I don't," said Alan.

"They can know such a lot without letting on that they do or saying anything at all," Mark continued; "or they certainly look as if they did."