mold of all speech. Now my drowsy mind harked back to American days,
to scenes in homes and clubs.

I rose, and wrapping the loin-cloth about me, set out with a lantern
in search of that sound. It led me down the trail, across the brook,
and up the slope into the dense green growth of the mountain-side.
Beyond I saw lights in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai Oo.

My bare feet made no noise, and through the undergrowth I peered
upon as odd a sight as ever pleased a lover of the bizarre. A blaze
of torches lighted a cleared space among the tall palm columns, and
in the flickering red glow a score of naked, tattooed figures
crouched about a shining mat of sugar-cane. About them great piles
of yellow-boxed Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane
mat shone the red and white and black of the cards.

O Lalala sat facing me, absorbed in the game. At his back the yellow
boxes were piled high, his crutch propped against them, and
continually he speeded the play by calling out, "Passy, calley or
makum bigger!" "Comely center!" or, "Ante uppy!"

These were the sounds that had swept my memory back to civilization
and drawn me from my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of
poker--the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of
Shanghai--and evidently he had already taught his eager pupils that
patois.

They crouched about the mat, bent forward in their eagerness, and
the flickering light caught twisting mouths and eyes ringed with
tattooing. Over their heads the torches flared, held by breathless