Kan Wong slid into its waterfront turmoil, an infinitesimal human atom added to it.  His tiny craft fixed itself upon the outer edge of the wriggling river life like a coral cell attaching itself to a slow growing atoll.  From there he worked his way inshore, crawling over the craft that stretched out from the low banks as a water beetle might move over the flotsam and jetsam caught in the back-water of a sluggish stream.  Once in the narrow, crowded streets of the city itself, he roamed aimlessly, open-eyed to its wonders, dreamily observant.  Out of the native quarter and into the foreign section he moved, accustoming himself to these masters of mystery whom he was about to serve, calling sluggish memory to his aid as his cars strove to reconstruct The meaning of the barbarous jargon.

Into the quarter where the Foreign Devils and the native population came together to barter and to trade, he strayed one day.  A Foreign Devil in a strangely unattractive uniform was addressing a crowd of coolies in their own tongue.  Kan Wong attached himself to the outer edge of the impassively curious throng, his ears alert, his features, as ever, an imperturbable mask.  The foreign officer, for such he seemed to be, was making an offer to the assemblage for contract labour:  one dollar a day, with rice, fish, and tea rations, for work in a foreign land.  Kan Wong translated the money quickly into yens.  The sum seemed incredible to him.  What service would he not perform for such payment?  Why, within a year, or two at the very most, with careful frugality, he might return and buy himself a junk worthy of his Dragon dreams of the river.  And then ...

The officer talked on, persuading, holding out the glittering lure of profit and adventure.  Kan Wong listened eagerly.  He had thought there was a ban on contract labour, but perhaps this new Republican Government, so friendly to the Foreign Devil, had removed it.  Surely one who wore the uniform of a soldier and an officer could not thus publicly solicit coolies without the sanction of the mandarins, or escape their notice.

Kan Wong studied the crowd.  It contained a few Chinese soldiers, who were obviously keeping order.  He was satisfied, and edged his way closer to the speaker.  There, already, ranged to one side was a line of his own kind, jabbering to a Celestial who put down their names on slips of rice paper and accepted their marks, which they made with a bamboo brush, that they bonded themselves to the adventure.  Kan Wong gained the signing table.  Picking up the brush, he set his name, the name of one of the Dragon’s blood, to the contract, accepted a duplicate, and stepped back into the waiting line.