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lines around Shunkien.
     His lack of orders would make it hard. What would he tell them?
    He began to struggle with the cork. He needed a drink to steady him down. Just one
     and then he’d quit.
    Again he looked at the reverend’s nodding pate. He frowned a little. He was so tired
     he couldn’t sleep and everything was passing in review behind his eyes. It seemed
     only that morning that he had slid through the mission gates to head for the coast
     and the States. He had been wearing a denim shirt and jeans, the kind his father sometimes
     gave to his workmen. He had some biscuits in his pocket and the contents of the poor
     box—which was not much.
    He remembered how that money had scorched his thigh, how certain he had been that
     Jehovah would open up the heavens and knock him flat with a thunderbolt. Mile after
     mile he had watched the heavens and when nothing had happened he began to suspect
     that a later doom was waiting for him.
    But he had needed that money. It had bought him meals and places to sleep, little
     as it was.
    Since that time he had never passed a church without recalling that theft.
    Things were different now. For fifteen years he had lived on gunpowder and excitement
     and flaming drink. The fifteen years before that had been spent in those mission walls
     behind them, praying every night, reading the Bible every day, saying grace lengthily
     before each meal, attending church and listening to his father’s droning sermons six
     hours out of every Sunday.
    He had not been allowed to play with his Chinese friends because a white boy, according
     to his father, had a part to share in the “ white man’s burden .”
    What a funny kid he must have been! Crammed with biblical texts, living in fear of
     great and awful catastrophe when he had done wrong, holding his father in awe because
     the Chinese all about knew his gift of doctoring and considered him a great man.
    He recalled the hour when he knew he could not bear it longer. He was alone in his
     room staring at a chromo of the manger scene upon the wall. He had slipped into the
     village the night before to talk with friends. It had been against the law and he
     had been detected. In his ears still rang the Voice of Doom which had intoned his
     wickedness. He was wayward. He would not conform. Unless he mended his ways, his was
     the Path to Eternal Darkness. His supper had been withheld and rebellion born of hunger
     had sent him forth.
    He was Condemned Forever. He could do no more wrong. And he had robbed the poor box
     on his way through the gates.
    That was fifteen years ago and there, on the front seat, was his kidnaped father,
     sleeping with his mouth open, with his collar unfastened and sticking out under his
     ear, with his coat in rags and his pants leg slit. . . .
    A droning sound was in the air and Mitchell, sensing rather than hearing it, glanced
     down the road behind them, expecting to see another car. The road was empty fore and
     aft.
    In sudden consternation, Mitchell slid the bottle hastily into his pack and leaned
     outside into the stream of wind.
    Above and behind them, about a thousand feet high, roared three Japanese Kawasaki KDA-5s .
    They were spread out, one behind the other in dive formation, and Mitchell was looking
     at them head-on as they started down.
    “Toughey!” yelled Mitchell. “STOP!”
    Toughey tromped upon the screaming brakes and the car slewed sideways in billowing
     dust, Toughey fighting the wheel.
    “GET OUT!” shouted Mitchell, snatching at the girl’s arm and dragging her with him.
     They plunged over the door, the girl still half-asleep, hitting the road before the
     car had stopped moving.
    The reverend’s glasses flew from his nose as his inertia threw him ahead. Toughey
     had him by the coat.
    A chattering blast filled the air, audible above the shriek of wires and yammer of
     engines. Vicious spurts of dust streaked along the road toward the car.
    Mitchell threw the girl into the