“Hang it!” complained a voice, loudly.  “The beggar was too—­Hallo!  Oh, I say, Gilly!  Gilly, ahoy!  Pick us up, there’s a good chap!  The bird first, will you, and then me.”

A tall young man in brown holland and a battered terai stood above on the grassy brink.

“Oh, beg pardon,” he continued.  “Took you for old Gilly, you know.”  He snapped the empty shells from his gun, and blew into the breech, before adding, “Would you mind, then?  That is, if you’re bound up for Stink-Chau.  It’s a beastly long tramp, and I’ve been shooting all afternoon.”

Followed by three coolies who popped out of the grass with game-bags, the young stranger descended, hopped nimbly from tussock to gunwale, and perched there to wash his boots in the river.

“Might have known you weren’t old Gilly,” he said over his shoulder.  “Wutzler said the Fa-Hien lay off signaling for sampan before breakfast.  Going to stay long?”

“I am agent,” answered Rudolph, with a touch of pride, “for Fliegelman and Sons.”

“Oh?” drawled the hunter, lazily.  He swung his legs inboard, faced about, and studied Rudolph with embarrassing frankness.  He was a long-limbed young Englishman, whose cynical gray eyes, and thin face tinged rather sallow and Oriental, bespoke a reckless good humor.  “Life sentence, eh?  Then your name’s—­what is it again?—­Hackh, isn’t it?  Heywood’s mine.  So you take Zimmerman’s place.  He’s off already, and good riddance.  He was a bounder!—­Charming spot you’ve come to!  I daresay if your Fliegelmans opened a hong in hell, you might possibly get a worse station.”

Without change of manner, he uttered a few gabbling, barbaric words.  A coolie knelt, and with a rag began to clean the boots, which, from the expression of young Mr. Heywood’s face, were more interesting than the arrival of a new manager from Germany.

“It will be dark before we’re in,” he said.  “My place for the night, of course, and let your predecessor’s leavings stand over till daylight.  After dinner we’ll go to the club.  Dinner!  Chicken and rice, chicken and rice!  Better like it, though, for you’ll eat nothing else, term of your life.”

“You are very kind,” began Rudolph; but this bewildering off-hand youngster cut him short, with a laugh:—­

“No fear, you’ll pay me!  Your firm supplies unlimited liquor.  Much good that ever did us, with old Zimmerman.”

The sampan now slipped rapidly on the full flood, up a narrow channel that the setting of the sun had turned, as at a blow, from copper to indigo.  The shores passed, more and more obscure against a fading light.  A star or two already shone faint in the lower spaces.  A second war-junk loomed above them, with a ruddy fire in the stern lighting a glimpse of squat forms and yellow goblin faces.

“It is very curious,” said Rudolph, trying polite conversation, “how they paint so the eyes on their jonks.”