Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE YANGSTE HORDE. supplied the Yangste Valley with its most delectable food. From the Saddle Group to Gutzlaff Island the column broke, that Sweating and clamorous sampan crews. might live—and broke and broke again; then, in despair of any formation at all, came the flagship’s signal for each ship to proceed independently. But from Gutzlaff to the Tung Sha light vessel the captain himself stood at the en- gine room telegraphs, the chief quartermas- ter at the wheel. And the off-watch crew manned the life lines in utter astonishment at the ten times a thousand flapping sail that breasted the swirling coffee tide, and that made of all horizons a pulsing cloud of gray—uncounted fleets, armadas, of sam- pans and of junks—the Yangste Horde. All through the banquet I had felt the power of his eyes. Or if not of the eyes alone, at least the power of the thing that lay behind and reached forth with its ten- tacular magnetism to grip the souls of men. Never before had I sensed so tangible a might. Perhaps it made itself the more keenly felt and eerie because it was not directed against me or any other about the table. It was simply a presence in the room—a living, vibrant, and seemingly malignant currentlike spirit that impregnated all things. It dominated, too, not so much by active coercion as by the feeling it inspired that, although leashed in the man’s re- straint, it was ever in danger of breaking down the barriers of his will and consuming our very own. He was introduced as the power behind the Chino-Asiatique Banking Corporation. From the moment I had felt the cool, strong clasp of his slim-fingered hand I knew that behind any cause he willed to espouse he must be a power indeed. Yet, at that, some- thing dim within me roused in warning, and vaguely droned and droned that even as a friend the man must be feared. As an enemy—the thought could not abide. I watched him covertly as the speeches were made. Without the slightest change of countenance he smoked cigarette after cigarette, and the neatness of his ash de- posit in the carven silver of the tray on 271 the white damask before him gave evidence of the controlled order of his. thoughts. Controlled order, and yet—if the power within him broke its bounds, would that order still be controlled? I wondered. Then he was called upon to speak. As his calm, resonant words, slow voiced, throbbed in the corners of the room, I felt again the thing behind his deep black and thinking eyes. He smiled once as he bowed in welcome to our ranking officer. His glance slowly swept over mine. I strove to meet it, and in that very striving was confession of my own comparative weak- ness. Ashamed, my eyes fell. I glanced up again, and it seemed that the crinkles about his own had deepened, as by a secret humor. I shook myself. This was fool- ishness! Childish! What was the man to me? - He said little beyond his word of welcome to our destroyers now moored in the Wham- poa off the French Bund. Yet the applause, from the other Chinese guests, echoed and reéchoed in the room as it had for no other single speaker. He bowed with another flashing smile, then sat down. As gravely unperturbed as before, he accepted a ciga- rette from the consul, a match from the president of the Chino-Asiatique, and his first ash dropped in the same neat circle of the old. In the midst of our own leader’s reply a servant entered with wine, and as he passed Kung Wo Tai he stumbled slightly. In recovering he breathed an ejaculation in his native tongue. Kung Wo Tai gave no sign that he had heard, but dropped another ash on the silver tray. Yet when the applause had done he arose and ex- cused himself—and as the Chinese guests stood erect as he left the banquet room, we, as courtesy demanded, arose as well. The power behind the Chino-Asiatique Banking Corporation! Was that all? I wondered. ‘They treated him as a god. There are reaches of the Whampoa, as in the great river to whose ever-flowing vastness it contributes its little might, where the surface of the yellow water is ribbon smooth. Its motion is hardly perceptible, and even the gentle breezes from the comicboooks C©