Morosely, as if ashamed of this outburst, he led the way through the bare, sunny compound, and when the gate had closed rattling behind them, stated their plans concisely and sourly.  “No work to-day, not a stroke!  We’ll just make it a holiday, catchee good time.—­What?  No.  Rot!  I won’t work, and you can’t.  That’s all there is about that.  Don’t be an ass!  Come along.  We’ll go out first and see Captain Kneebone.”  And when Rudolph, faithful to certain tradesmen snoring in Bremen, would have protested mildly, he let fly a stinging retort, and did not regain his temper until they had passed the outskirts of the village.  Yet even the quarrel seemed part of some better understanding, some new, subtle bond between two lonely men.

Before them opened a broad field dotted with curious white disks, like bone buttons thrown on a green carpet.  Near at hand, coolies trotted and stooped, laying out more of these circular baskets, filled with tiny dough-balls.  Makers of rice-wine, said Heywood; as he strode along explaining, he threw off his surly fit.  The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense of holiday.

Almost gayly, the companions threaded a marshy path to the river, and bargained with a shrewd, plump woman who squatted in the bow of a sampan.  She chaffered angrily, then laughed at some unknown saying of Heywood’s, and let them come aboard.  Summoned by voluble scolding, her husband appeared, and placidly labored at the creaking sweep.  They slipped down a river of bronze, between the oozy banks; and the war-junks, the naked fisherman, the green-coated ruins of forts, drifted past like things in reverie, while the men lay smoking, basking in bright weather.  They looked up into serene spaces, and forgot the umbra of pestilence.

Heywood, now lazy, now animated, exchanged barbaric words with the boat-woman.  As their tones rose and fell, she laughed.  Long afterward, Rudolph was to remember her, a wholesome, capable figure in faded blue, darting keen glances from her beady eyes, flashing her white teeth in a smile, or laughing till the green pendants of false jade trembled in her ears.

“Her name is Mrs. Wu,” said Heywood, between smoke-rings, “and she is a lady of humor.  We are discussing the latest lawsuit, which she describes as suing a flea and winning the bite.  Her maiden name was the Pretty Lily.  She is captain of this sampan, and fears that her husband does not rate A. B.”

Where the river disembogued, the Pretty Lily, cursing and shrilling, pattering barefoot about her craft, set a matting sail and caught the breeze.  Over the copper surface of the roadstead, the sampan drew out handily.  Ahead, a black, disreputable little steamer lay anchored, her name—­two enormous hieroglyphics painted amidships—­staring a bilious yellow in the morning sun.  Under these, at last, the sampan came bumping, unperceived or neglected.