"Thou accurst one!" I heard the tenor groan. Then "Help me!... I'm dying!"
"She's done it now!" I exclaimed, springing from my bed.
"Are you stifling with blood?" the woman hissed, fierce exultation in her tone.
"Help me!... I'm dying!" moaned the man. "And done to death by a woman!"
It was murder--no doubt about that. Clad only in my pajamas though I was, I prepared to throw myself against the door.
"Die, thou accurst one! Perish!" shrieked the woman.
I was on the point of bursting into the room when I was arrested by the sound of the tenor's voice speaking in normal tones. There followed a woman's laugh. I paused to listen. It was well that I did so. They were rehearsing for the evening's performance the murder scene from _La Tosca_!
On another occasion, long after midnight, I was aroused from sleep by a terrific racket which suddenly burst forth in the streets below. I heard the crash of splintering bottles followed by the steps of the native gendarmes beating a hasty retreat. Then, from throats that spoke my own tongue, rose the rollicking words of a long-familiar chorus:
"I was drunk last night, I was drunk the night before, I'll get drunk tomorrow night If I never get drunk any more; For when I'm drunk I'm as happy as can be, For I am a member of the Souse Fam-i-lee!"
Leaning from my casement, I hailed a passing Frenchman.
"Les touristes Americains sont arrivés, M'sieu," he answered dryly.
By the light of the street-lamps as he turned away I could see him shrug his shoulders.
Thinking it over, it struck me that I had been overharsh in my judgment of the homesick exiles who in this far corner of the earth are clinching the rivets of France's colonial empire.
The next morning I set sail from Saigon for China. Leaving the mouth of the river in our wake, we rounded the mighty promontory of Cap St. Jacques and headed for the open sea. The palm-fringed shore line of Cochin-China dropped away; the blue mountains of Annam turned pale and ghostly in the evening mists. A sun-scorched, pestilential land.... I was glad to leave it. But already I am longing to return. I want once more to sit at a café table beneath the awnings of the Rue Catinat, before me a tall glass with ice tinkling in it. I want to hear the _pousse-pousse_ coolies padding softly by in the gathering twilight. I want to see the little Annamite women in their sleazy silken garments and the boisterous, swaggering _legionnaires_ in their white helmets. I want to stroll once more beneath the tamarinds beside the Mekong, to smell the odors of the hot lands, to hear again the throbbing of the tom-toms and the soft music of the wind-blown temple bells. For