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 CHAPTER XXX

Again, as Wu Li Chang passed through the office yards, the coolies almost groveled at his feet, and this time he threw a curt but not unpleasant word to one or two of them.

He had been with the Gregorys some time, the afternoon seemed at its hottest, but he was as fresh and crisp as when the close duel began; and yet in a more resilient, a more stimulated way, he had felt the strain as they had not, for he had known the story of Basil and Nang Ping.

But "crisp" and "fresh" were the last words that could be applied to the shipper or his wife, or, for that matter, to any of their companions. Robert Gregory was having a stiff "peg," and needed it; and Mrs. Gregory, less unnerved, was tired and anxious enough. And Holman and his fellow faithful few were on desperate tenterhooks both for their chief (he was roughly lovable and not a mean master) and for the threatened business to which they were sincerely and doggedly devoted.

Perhaps Tom Carruthers and Ah Wong were the two Gregoryites least unhinged by the day's fusillade of miscarriage and by its recurrent stalemate. Ah Wong was anxious, but she had been racked by no surprise. Of the Steamship Company's business she knew little—and cared less. But, even so, she probably had, next to