all else, and remained,--each outline sharper in memory, the smoky lamp
brighter, the blow of the hilt louder, the smell of peanut oil more
pungent. The episode, to him, was a disconnected, unnecessary fragment,
one bloody strand in the whole terrifying snarl. But his companion
stalked on in silence, like a man who saw a pattern in the web of
things, and was not pleased.



CHAPTER V


IN TOWN

Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day. The same
slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like
wanderers lost in a tunnel. The same inexplicable noises endured, the
same smells. Under lamps, the shaven foreheads still bent toward
microscopic labor. The curtained window of a fantan shop still glowed in
orange translucency, and from behind it came the murmur and the endless
chinking of cash, where Fortune, a bedraggled, trade-fallen goddess,
split hairs with coolies for poverty or zero. Nothing was altered in
these teeming galleries, except that turbid daylight had imperceptibly
given place to this other dimness, in which lanterns swung like tethered
fire-balloons. Life went on, mysteriously, without change or sleep.

While the two white men shouldered their way along, a strange chorus
broke out, as though from among the crowded carcasses in a butcher's
stall. Shrill voices rose in unearthly discord, but the rhythm was
not of Asia.