Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/301

Rh friends upon that moonlit shore, had cursed us for bearing the Great Joss to the ship across the motionless waters of the Gulf of Tongking.

Since that night we had ourselves anathematised someone else for serving us as we had served him.

I had only seen him once, and then from some little distance in the moonshine, but there was no possibility of mistaken identity. This was the man. He was dressed in the same fantastic garb, and came at me like a ghost out of shadowland. He took me by the shoulders, and he cried—as he had done upon that moon-kissed shore:—

“The Great Joss! The Great Joss! Give us back the Great Joss!”

Exactly what took place I cannot say. I was so taken aback by the unexpectedness of the encounter—having never dreamed that I should set eyes upon the man again—that, for some moments, sheer surprise robbed me of my faculties. Before I was myself again, the man had gone. Others had thrust him from me. Although I rushed here and there among the people who stood about I could not find him. He had vanished.

I had swallowed a good many bitter pills since last I left that wharf—the bitterest was still to come. I had to pay my visit to the owners. On the night of my arrival it was too late to see them. The pleasure was postponed to the morning. It was a pleasure!

I came out from their presence a disgraced man. Which was no more than I had expected, though it was no easier to bear on that account. The blame was wholly mine. So they would have it. For some of the language which they used to me I found it hard to keep my hands from off them. My tale of the Great Joss, and of all that I had hoped to gain for them by that adventure, they received with something more than incredulity. If the thing