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him. ‘A man who will stick by me day and night, make my interests his, guard my safety. There are certain matters—my life has been threatened———Lie down, Mark, and go to sleep!’ he added sharply, for I was leaning over the side of my bunk, wide-eyed. ‘I’ve given you your life,’ he finished to the Chinaman. ‘Now I ask that you devote it to me.’
“Hung—or whatever his name was—thought for a moment. To his Oriental mind a promise was a promise, and not to be lightly given, even under such extraordinary circumstances. I am trying to be brief, Sergeant Barnes. I’ll sum up the discussion that followed in a few words. Hung was willing to serve my father—but for how long? He said something about returning to China to spend his last days there. There should be a limit, he thought. After a time they set it at twenty years. This was the fifth of December, the anniversary of Hung’s birth at Waikiki thirty years before.
