All these were silent.
"No, above!" cried Rudolph, pointing.
After the mourners' barge, at some distance, came hurrying a boat
crowded with shining yellow bodies and dull blue jackets. Long bamboo
poles plied bumping along her gunwale, sticking into the air all about
her, many and loose and incoordinate, like the ribs of an unfinished
basket. From the bow spurted a white puff of smoke. The dull report of a
musket lagged across the water.
The bullet skipped like a schoolboy's pebble, ripping out little rags of
white along that surface of liquid clay.
The line of fire thus revealed, revealed the mark. Untouched, a black
head bobbed vigorously in the water, some few yards before the boat. The
saffron crew, poling faster, yelled and cackled at so clean a miss,
while a coolie in the bow reloaded his matchlock.
The fugitive head labored like that of a man not used to swimming, and
desperately spent. It now gave a quick twist, and showed a distorted
face, almost of the same color with the water.
The mouth gaped black in a sputtering cry, then closed choking,
squirted out water, and gaped once more, to wail clearly:--
"I am Jesus Christ!"
In the broad, bare daylight of the river, this lonely and sudden
blasphemy came as though a person in a dream might declare himself to a
waking audience of skeptics.
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