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