Ο

XIX

ALLISTER

N the morning of the 24th of September, Sinclair, looking down from a mountain height

on the town and harbour of Keelung, saw one of the warships get up steam and put out to sea. Watching it with his glasses, he saw it heading north, and then west, till even the trailing smoke disappeared beyond the far blue coast line which curved away towards the northernmost point of the island.

"I'd give something to know where that Frenchman is heading for and what mischief he has in mind."

66

Bedad, an' if he doesn't do more than he's been doin' here these last six weeks, he'd better give up the job."

He

"That's just the reason why I think that he may be intending to try his hand somewhere else. can't do any more damage here without a land force. But there are other places where he could-Tamsui, for example."

"Begorra, an' if I thought there was goin' to be a shindy there, it's not one minute longer I'd spind kickin' me heels around this ould dead-an'-alive camp. I'd be makin' for Tamsui as fast as the two legs of me cud carry me."

"So would I. But there doesn't seem to be any movement among the rest of the fleet. We'll just keep a sharp lookout and perhaps we'll get some word from Tamsui. If there's anything doing there, I'm

blamed if I am going to be stewed up here and miss the fun."

Two days later Sinclair was again at his lookout. From the departure of that first French warship which had steamed away to the west, either he or Gorman had kept a constant watch on the movements of the French fleet. Perhaps it was all because of his anxiety to be where he was most needed. Perhaps there were other reasons which he did not mention to Sergeant Gorman.

He had found a shady seat for himself beneath the wide-spreading fronds of a tree-fern, and through his glasses was carefully scanning the squadron of men-of-war in the harbour below. A footstep sounded on a rock near him. It was Gorman:

A letter for you from Dr. MacKay. A boy has jist arrived wid it. I thought that you moight want to see it at wanst."

66

Thank you, Gorman," he replied, tearing it open. "Just as we thought. He says that the Château Renaud arrived off Tamsui on Wednesday. That's the day we saw her leave here. . . . Overhauled the Welle yesterday, and the Hailoong, too. . . . Then Mac's at Tamsui. Boys, but I'd like to see him!... Says that the consul has got a hint somewhere that the French are going to bombard Tamsui. . . . What did I tell you, Gorman? . . . Thinks we had better come back there at once and take his boys with us. . . . So do I. . . . Says your ambulance corps can take care of any wounded there are likely to be here. . . . Of course they can. Whether they can or not, I'm going."

"Another moving!" exclaimed Gorman, who had been using the glasses.

"What! By Jove, you're right!"

Sinclair was manifesting unwonted excitement. "We'd better start at once if we want to get through this evening. Pretty nearly thirty miles of a walk if we should happen to miss the launch. I'd like to get there before the Hailoong sails. I want to see McLeod."

Gorman's left eye, which was invisible to Sinclair, winked and that side of his face assumed a most comical expression. The other eye looked straight out at the landscape, and the other side of his face was judicial in its seriousness. He was a man of some perception.

"An' you think that the hospital here will get along widout us?" he asked.

"Of course it will! I'm going to Tamsui."

"Faith and you're a man afther me own heart. Let the hospital go to Ballyhack. I'm wid you. . . . There she goes headin' for the west. The parley-voos are plottin' somethin' an' we want to be there whin it happens."

Late that afternoon practically the whole foreign population of North Formosa and the officers of the Locust were gathered on the deck of the Hailoong. Captain Whiteley and McLeod were giving what they called their "Farewell At Home!" After their experience of the day before they were doubtful whether they would be allowed to enter the port again so long as the Frenchmen stayed.

It was perhaps the largest party of foreigners which had ever gathered in North Formosa. Consular, mission and custom staffs, merchants, the doctor, naval officers, visitors, and hosts, they numbered thirty or

more. The measure of uncertainty, the spice of a possible peril, added zest to their intercourse. Just out of sight over the projecting ridge of the hill to the north of the harbour, the Château Renaud was lying at anchor. That very day the long, low, sinisterlooking Vipère had slipped into the very mouth of the harbour. She could be plainly seen from where they sat chatting and sipping their tea on the deck of the Hailoong. Every one felt that these engines of war were big with potentialities of danger and death.

As usual, since her arrival in Formosa, Miss MacAllister was the centre of attraction. Bald-headed seniors like De Vaux and Boville vied with young men like Carteret and mere youths like Lanyon for her company and her smiles. But for reasons best known to herself she chose to give those privileges in much the largest measure to McLeod. As one of the hosts he had not in any way tried to monopolize her. But she showed so marked a partiality for his companionship that it did appear as if he had the monopoly.

"It seems as if no person but a seaman has any show with the ladies to-day," said Carteret with that indefinable bitterness of tone which he so often used. It called attention to the fact that each of the ladies present was deep in conversation with an officer of one or other of the ships.

66

"By my faith, it can't be the sea which is the attraction," retorted Lieutenant Lanyon, for none of them will look at me. In Miss MacAllister's case it is the clannishness of the Scotch," he continued, loud enough for her to hear. "If McLeod weren't a Mac, he'd have no more show than I have, and that's no show at all, at all."

He thought that he would draw her by his very boldness, as he had done on more than one occasion before. All the satisfaction he got was:

"Now, Mr. Lanyon, please do not let everybody on board know that you cannot get a lady to talk to you. There's mother. She has just finished her conversation with Captain Whiteley. I know that she will take pity on you."

Lanyon joined as heartily as the rest in the laugh at his own expense, and, accepting her suggestion, was soon amusing himself and Mrs. MacAllister with his boyish tales of adventures and scrapes in the navy. Meanwhile Miss MacAllister was saying to

McLeod:

"Really, Mr. McLeod, I do not know what some of these men are made of. To think that they could sit here doing the little routine work of their offices, with battles going on within twenty miles of them, and never so much as go to see what a battle is like! I wanted to go myself. But father and the consul wouldn't let me."

"You must remember, Miss MacAllister, that the majority of things which are called men are not men. They are only dressed up to look like men. When they get in danger or any other place which needs men, all the man in them disappears and there is nothing left but the clothes."

"But Dr. MacKay says that Dr. Sinclair and Sergeant Gorman have not been in any real danger since they went over there. He says that the Chinese respect them too much to molest them."

"Yes; but that is where the difference comes in. Sinclair is a man. So is Gorman. So is MacKay. The Chinese know it, and they are safe. But some