Five Nights | Page 8

came up to me just before we arrived there with the remark:
"If you come with me I'll take you to have tea with the prettiest girl
you've ever seen."
This certainly seemed an invitation to accept, and I did so on the spot.
"She really is," he continued, observing my sceptically raised eyebrows,
"wonderfully pretty. She keeps a tea-shop and she is Chinese." With
that he bolted into his own cabin, which was next mine, and as I heard
him laughing, I concluded he was joking and thought no more about it.
However, as the ship glided up over flat sheets of golden water to the
landing-stage, he joined me again, and together we stood looking up
the principal street of Sitka which runs down to meet the little quay.
It was just four in the afternoon, and everything was vivid living gold,
as the floods of yellow sunshine filled all the shining air. The green
copper dome of the church alone stood out a soft spot of delicate colour
in the dazzling burnished haze.
At the sides of the street sat and crouched the small squat figures of the
Alaskan Indians, each with a mat before it on which the owner had set
out his little store of wares--bottles of various-coloured sands, reindeer
slippers beautifully embroidered in blue beads, carved walrus teeth.
We stepped on the shore and the Indians looked up at us with quaint
brown questioning eyes, like their own seals.
They did not ask you to buy, but watched you silently.
"Come along," said my friend, "we'll go up and get tea before there's a
crowd."

After about five minutes' walk, while I was gazing about interested in
this quaint little capital, my companion suddenly exclaimed:
"In here," and turned through an opening at the corner of a square
enclosure on our right hand. I followed, and saw we had entered a little
square court or compound, similar to those with which the poorer
classes in any Eastern community surround their huts.
The floor was dried and hardened mud, the walls about seven feet high,
and numerous small tables laid for tea stood round them.
My companion did not pause here, however, but went straight through
in at the low house door, and we found ourselves in a very small, dark
passage, hung with red and with red cloths dangling from the ceiling,
that swept our heads as we came in.
It seemed quite dark inside, coming from the fierce gold light of the
streets, but there was a dim little lamp in Eastern glass of many colours
swinging somewhere at the farther end, and we found our way down to
a low door in the side of the passage. This brought us into a small
square room which gave the impression of being sunk below the level
of the street. There were diminutive windows in the outer wall, but they
were close to the low ceiling and though the glorious light from without
tried hard to come in, it was successfully obstructed by little rush blinds
of red and green. The rushes were placed vertically side by side and
fastened together with string and painted in bright tints. The breeze
from the sea came through them and sang a low song of its own. The
walls were hung with red stuff curtains, over which ramped wonderful
Chinese dragons in green; the floor was spread with something soft, on
which the feet made no sound; in the corners of the room stood some
little tables.
To the farthest of these, under the rush-covered windows, we made our
way and sat down on some very ordinary American chairs, a hideous
note in the quaint surrounding, introduced as a concession, no doubt, to
Western taste.
"I rather like this, Morley," I said as I took my seat and looked round.

"Thought you would," he returned, and pressed his hand on a tiny
bronze figure standing on the table. At the touch of his finger the head
of the figure disappeared between its shoulders, and then sprung up
again, producing a harsh clanging sound of a gong.
Hardly a moment later the red curtains that hung over the doorway
parted, and a figure came into the room.
Such a sweet figure, the very spirit of poetic girlhood seemed incarnate
before us.
In appearance she was a Chinese maiden of seventeen or eighteen years;
seventeen or eighteen according to our standard of looks, doubtless she
was in reality younger.
The face was wonderfully beautiful, a very rounded oval and of the
most perfect creamy tint, the nose, straight and fine, was rather long,
the upper lip short, and the mouth very small, soft, and full-lipped. The
eyes inclined a little to the Chinese shape, but were large, wide, and
well-opened and