resolute back of Captain Ammidon. A surprising hatred filled him at the
memory of the other's intolerant gaze, the careless contempt of his
words. He thought, oddly enough, of the delicate and ingenious tortures
practiced on offenders in China; the pleasant mental picture followed of
Ammidon bowed in a wooden collar, of Gerrit Ammidon bambooed, sliced,
slowly choking.... With an intense sense of horror he caught himself
dwelling on these dripping visions. His hands clasped rigidly, a sweat
stood out on his brow, in a realization that was at once dread and a
self-loathing.

About him lay the tranquil Salem water, the still wharves, the familiar
roofs and green tree tops. This wasn't Canton, he told himself, but
America: there was Nettie; only a few streets away was his father's
house, his own home, all solid and safe and reassuring. China was a
thing of the past, its insidious secret hold broken. It was now only a
dream of evil fascination from which he had waked to the reality, the
saving substance, of Derby Wharf. "It's his domineering manner," he
explained the outburst to Nettie; "all shipmasters have it--as if the
world were a vessel they damned from a quarter-deck in the sky. I never
could put up with them."

"He is very kind, really," she replied, looking away over the harbor. "It
is so queer--marrying a Chinese woman like that. How will he ever get
along with her or be happy?"

"He won't," Edward Dunsack asserted. "Leave that to time." He studied her
attentively. "Was it anything to you?" he asked.

"It might have been," she acknowledged listlessly, her gaze still on the
horizon. "He came to see me two or three times, quite differently from