I have heard from a distance preaching in many languages.  Though only the cadences, the pauses, and rhythm reached me, I had no difficulty in knowing their origin and meaning.  Thought casts the mold of all speech.  Now my drowsy mind harked back to American days, to scenes in homes and clubs.

I rose, and wrapping the loin-cloth about me, set out with a lantern in search of that sound.  It led me down the trail, across the brook, and up the slope into the dense green growth of the mountain-side.  Beyond I saw lights in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai Oo.

My bare feet made no noise, and through the undergrowth I peered upon as odd a sight as ever pleased a lover of the bizarre.  A blaze of torches lighted a cleared space among the tall palm columns, and in the flickering red glow a score of naked, tattooed figures crouched about a shining mat of sugar-cane.  About them great piles of yellow-boxed Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane mat shone the red and white and black of the cards.

O Lalala sat facing me, absorbed in the game.  At his back the yellow boxes were piled high, his crutch propped against them, and continually he speeded the play by calling out, “Passy, calley or makum bigger!” “Comely center!” or, “Ante uppy!”

These were the sounds that had swept my memory back to civilization and drawn me from my Golden Bed.  O Lalala had all the slang of poker—­the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of Shanghai—­and evidently he had already taught his eager pupils that patois.

They crouched about the mat, bent forward in their eagerness, and the flickering light caught twisting mouths and eyes ringed with tattooing.  Over their heads the torches flared, held by breathless onlookers.  The candlenuts, threaded on long spines of cocoanut-leaves, blazed only a few seconds, but each dying one lit the one beneath as it sputtered out, and the scores of strings shed a continuous though wavering light upon the shining mat and the cards.

The midnight darkness of the enclosing grove and the vague columns of the palms, upholding the rustling canopy that hid the sky, hinted at some monstrous cathedral where heathen rites were celebrated.

I pushed through the fringe of onlookers, none of whom heeded me, and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches.  The madness of play was upon them.  The sad placidity of every day was gone; as in the throes of the dance they kept their gleaming eyes upon the fluctuations of fortune before them.  Twice I spoke sharply before they heard me, and then in a frenzy of supplication Apporo threw herself upon me.

Would I not give her matches—­the packets of matches that were under the Golden Bed?  She and her husband, Great Fern, had spent but an hour in the magic circle ere they were denuded of their every match.  Couriers were even now scouring the valley for more matches.  Quick, hasten!  Even now it might be that the packets under the Golden Bed were gone!