Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/148

124 walls of the nightmare city. The Chinese landlord had not returned, and it seemed likely that intruders had been warned away from the smoky room with the hole in the oiled paper of the side wall. The deserter had found a bottle of samshu, and tried to brace his nerves with a swallow of it, but the smell sickened him, and he flung it against the brick partition, in a passion of rage at the source of his cyclonic ruin. The heavy, yellow liquid guttered across the floor, and the stench of it drove the soldier into the courtyard, where the chatter of Chinese voices sent him quaking back into his little inferno.

He was not a coward, but he was alone in the darkness with such fears as wrested from him all weapons. Somewhere outside, a Chinese watchman, drifting along on his rounds, was beating a gong to frighten away evil-doers. The measured bong, bong, bong caused the fugitive to wish that sudden death might overtake the harmless old gentleman, for at each stroke it seemed as if tacks were being driven into his skull. Toward midnight Corporal Sweeney fell into a stupor of