“Do have this chair,” she said. “I was going down.”
Miss Hui Fei smiled faintly. “I coul'n' sleep,” she murmured.
“There's one little article I suppose none of us thought to bring--” thus Miss Carmichael, balancing in her light way on the balls of her feet--“needle and thread.” She even indulged in a little passing laugh. “I think my maid--” began Miss Hui Fei.
She turned; and the boy started impulsively toward her. Miss Carmichael moved away, over the deck, but heard him saying, in a broken voice:
“You'll come back? I've got to tell you something!”
To which Miss Hui Fei replied, in a voice that was meant to be at once pleasant and impersonal: “Why--yes. I think I'll come back. It's so close down there.” The two young women went below. Quietly Miss Carmichael waited in the passage.
The needle and thread were shortly forthcoming. The white girl smiled; seeming really friendly there in the dim ray of light that slanted in through a window.
“We're in for a rather uncomfortable trip of it. I hope you'll let me do anything I can to help you. I'm more used to knocking about, of course.”
“We'll all make the best of it,” said the Manchu girl, and turned, with an effort at a smile, toward the stairs.
Miss Carmichael entered her own room. The lantern still burned, but the candle-end was low. She saw now an iron lamp, an open dish full of oil with a floating wick. This she lighted with the candle. Next, moving about almost without a sound, she fastened the swaying door-curtain with pins. Then she slipped out of her blouse and skirt; untied the pearl cape; and seated on the bed of matting, with her back to the door, began patiently sewing the pearls into her undergarments. It was to be a long task. Before dawn the lamp burned out, and fearful of being caught asleep with the amazing treasure about her she stood at the window and let the wind blow into her face until the faintly spreading light of dawn made the work again possible. The drowsiness that nearly overcame her now she fought off with an iron will. Nothing mattered--nothing but success. Her thin deft fingers worked in a tireless rhythm. Only once, very briefly, did she yield to the impulse to weigh the exquisite lustrous globes in her hands; to hold them close to the light. Her tireless reason told her that this wouldn't do. It brought an excited throbbing to her weary head.... She settled again to her task; time enough to gloat later. By way of a healthy mental occupation she counted the pearls as she threaded them--up to a thousand--on up to two thousand--then (the sun was redly up now; and folk were stirring about the deck) three thousand. In all, a few more than thirty-seven hundred pearls she threaded about her person; and then slipped back into blouse and skirt before permitting herself a few hours of sleep. The diamond-studded clasps she wrapped in a bit of cloth and stuffed into her hand-bag.