IN WHICH THE DESTINY THAT PLAYS WITH MEN MOVES THE PIECES ON THE BOARD

Dust lay thick along the road that led through the very heart of the native quarter of Mangadone; dust raised into a misty haze which hung in the air and actually introduced a light undernote of red into the effect.  Dust, which covered the bare feet of the coolies, the velvet slippers of the Burmese, which encroached everywhere and no one regarded, for presently, just at sundown, shouting watermen, carrying large bamboo vessels with great spouts, would come running along the road, casting the splashing water on all sides, and reduce the dry powder to temporary mud.

The main street of the huge bazaar in Mangadone was as busy a thoroughfare as any crowded lane of the city of London, and it blazed with colour and life as the evening air grew cool.  There were shops where baskets were sold, shops apparently devoted only to the sale of mirrors, shops where tailors sat on the ground and worked at sewing machines; sweet stalls, food stalls, cafes, flanked by dusty tubs of plants and crowded with customers, who reclined on sofas and chairs set right into the street itself.  Nearer the river end of the street, the shops were more important, and business offices announced themselves on large placards inscribed in English, and in curling Burmese characters like small worms hooping and arching themselves, and again in thick black letters which resembled tea leaves formed into the picturesque design of Chinese writing, for Mangadone was one of the most cosmopolitan ports of the East, and stood high in the commercial world as a place for trade.

Along the street a motley of colour took itself like a sea of shades and tints.  Green, crimson, lemon yellow, lapis-lazuli, royal purple, intermingled with the naked brown bodies of coolies clad only in loin-cloths, for every race and class emerged just before sunset.  Rich Burmen clad in yards of stiff, rustling silk jostled the lean, spare Chinamen and the Madrassis who came to Mangadone to make money out of the indolence of the natives of a place who cared to do little but smoke and laugh.  Poor Burmen in red and yellow cottons, as content with life as their wealthy brethren, loitered and smoked with the little white-coated women with flower-decked heads, and they all flowed on with the tide and filled the air with a perpetual babel of sound.

The great, high houses on either side of the street were dilapidated and gaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements.  Screaming children swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing, and out on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in the native quarter.  Sometimes a rag of curtain covered the entrances to the houses, but just as often it did not.  Women washed the big brass and earthenware pots, cooked the food, and played with the children in the smoky darkness, or sat to watch the evening show of the street.