THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL

BY
GUY BOOTHBY

AUTHOR OF A BID FOR FORTUNE, DR. NIKOLA,
THE MARRIAGE OF ESTHER, ETC.

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1897

Copyright, 1896
By D. Appleton and Company

CONTENTS.

THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL.

CHAPTER I.

HOW I COME TO HEAR OF THE BEAUTIFUL
WHITE DEVIL.

The night was sweltering hot, even for Hong Kong. The town clock had just chimed a quarter-past ten, and though the actual sound of the striking had died away, the vibration of the bells lingered for nearly half a minute on the murky stillness of the air. In spite of the exertions of the punkah coolie, the billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel was like the furnace-doors of Sheol. Benwell, of the Chinese Revenue cutter Y-Chang, and Peckle, of the English cruiser Tartaric, stripped nearly to the buff, were laboriously engaged upon a hundred up; while Maloney, of the San Francisco mail-boat, and I, George De Normanville, looked on, and encouraged them with sarcasms and utterly irrational advice. Between times the subdued jabbering of a group of rickshaw coolies, across the pavement, percolated in to us, and mingled with the click of the billiard balls and the monotonous whining of the punkah rope; then the voice of a man in the verandah upstairs, singing to the accompaniment of a banjo, drifted down, and set us beating time with our heels upon the wooden floor.

The words of the song seemed strangely out of place in that heathen land, so many thousand miles removed from Costerdom. But the wail of the music had quite a different effect. The singer's voice was distinctly a good one, and he used it with considerable ability:

"She wears an artful bonnet, feathers stuck all on it,
Covering a fringe all curled;
She's just about the neatest, prettiest, and sweetest
Donna in the wide, wide world.
And she'll be Mrs. 'Awkins, Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins,
Got her for to name the day.
We settled it last Monday, so to church on Sunday,
Off we trots the donkey shay.

"Oh, Eliza! Dear Eliza! If you die an old maid
You'll only have yourself to blame.
D'ye hear Eliza—dear Eliza!
Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins is a fust-class name."

Half a dozen other voices took up the chorus, and sent it rolling away over the litter of sampans alongside the wharf, out to where the red and blue funnel boats lay at anchor half a mile distant. The two players chalked their cues and stopped to participate.

"Oh, Eliza! Dear Eliza! If you die an old maid
You'll only have yourself to blame.
Oh, Eliza! Dear