"
He was gone a noticeable time, but came back smiling.
"Good news, Gilly." He held aloft a scrap of Chinese paper, scrawled on
with pencil. "We need expect nothing these ten days. They wait for more
ammunition--'more shoots,' the text has it. The Hak Kau--their Black
Dog--is a bronze cannon, nine feet long, cast at Rotterdam in 1607. He
writes, 'I saw it in shed last night, but is gone to-day. O.W.'
Gentlemen, for a timid man, our friend does not scamp his reports.
Thorough, rather? Little O.W. is O.K."
Chantel, still humming, had moved toward the door. All at once he
halted, and stared from the landward window. Cymbals clashed
somewhere below.
"What's this?" he cried sharply. The noise drew nearer, more brazen,
and with it a clatter of hoofs. "Here come swordsmen!"
"To play with you, I suppose. Your fame has spread." Heywood spoke with
a slow, mischievous drawl; but he crossed the room quickly. "What's up?"
Below, by the open gate, a gay grotesque rider reined in a piebald pony,
and leaning down, handed to the house-boy a ribbon of scarlet paper.
Behind him, to the clash of cymbals, a file of men in motley robes
swaggered into position, wheeled, and formed the ragged front of a
Falstaff regiment.
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