The Girl of the Golden Gate
childhood—her repugnance of physical contact. The water in the boat was so deep that she realized that if she put this man's head away from her lap it must sink. Perhaps he was dying—perhaps death had already claimed him and as this thought came to her she saw the open wound in his brow just back of another jagged scar.

The humility of shame bowed her head and her eyes filled with tears. This man had suffered this wound for her sake; he had come to her in the night when all hope had gone; he had snatched her from the clutches of wild beasts, who had shot him down even as he laid her in this boat. It was because of him that she lived.

She felt a tremor pass from Lavelle's body into hers. His lips parted with a sigh and he murmured something wearily. Then, his eyes opened for a second. He looked up into her face with the glance of a tired child, yet without recognition, and her heart gave a sudden fearful throb. She thought it was pity and knew it not for the stirring of the eternal motherhood that is in all women.

A gust of wind swept Emily's thick plaits of golden hair across his face and his eyes closed again, the while a faint smile flickered across his lips like one returning to a pleasant dream. He snuggled his head closer against the thigh which was numb from pillowing it and the woman did not move.

Chang, looking down from where he stood over them in the stern, like a giant in bronze, nursing the boat up to a sea anchor, alone had glimpsed what had happened. He shouted something which Emily could not understand. Stooping quickly he slipped a hand through Lavelle's tattered shirt.

"More better," he said. "Him heart move. Him live—you live. Sab-bee?"

The Chinaman's glance and the forceful nod of his head conveyed a meaning greater than his words. They implied a task for her performance—the doing of what was in her power to do for this man.

A horrifying cry from forward straightened the giant in a flash. One glance ahead and he gave the big steering oar a mighty sweep. He seemed to lift the boat bodily out of the water. A stream of orders poured from his lips and electrified every bit of life in the cockleshell, save that in Lavelle.

It took but a glimpse overside to transport these sea waifs from their horror of the night into a terror of the day. Elsie of Shanghai started from Emily's side into a sitting posture only to hide her head again. A man with a pointed black beard rose to his knees between the 
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