Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/86

 neck on the race-course, rehearsing the ponies for to-morrow's race.

It is a unique juxtaposition, that sweet and perfumed bit of God's acreage, and the lurid, teeming race-course, the dead men's bones (and women's, too, and babes') just under the grass, and the betting, straining, champagne-drinking, well-dressed crowd, with only a narrow strip of yellow, bamboo-fringed path between; unique as is the old juxtaposition of life and death, and, too, strangely eloquent and appropriate of Anglo-Chinese life.

Hong Kong! Heaven and Hell in one. Hong Kong a gem of lovely, laughing China given to Britain—or, perhaps, loaned for a century or two. Wu often wondered which.

Every light in Victoria seemed twinkling hard as Basil Gregory's boat gained the shore, a lamp in every window, a thousand painted paper lanterns, no two shaped or colored alike, swaying ambiently in the hands of coolies who trotted along the bund and up the hill paths, along the Bowen Road and peak-climbing streets, carrying chairs, pulling rickshaws, or running errands, uninterested but faithful, the most reliable hirelings on earth, and often, when the European employer gives himself half a chance with them, the most devoted.

Basil walked some distance from the spot where he had landed before he hailed a rickshaw. The naked coolie grunted a little at the address the Englishman gave him, but said grimly, "Can do." For Gregory had named a bungalow that nestled in a tiny grove of persimmon and loquat trees, nearly halfway up the Peak—and Hong Kong Peak is steep.

It was not his home address that he had given, nor that of any club respectable or otherwise, or tree-hidden