CHAPTER 1
Island Honor
CHAPTER 1Visible text2 paragraphs
A DREADFUL CHOICE WAS PUT UP TO THIS AGED RULER OF AN ISLAND
PEOPLE; A CHOICE FEW MEN WOULD CARE TO FACE, AND UNDER THE
TROPIC STARS A WHITE MAN OR SO HELPED HIM TO DECIDE -- IN TRUE
AMERICAN FASHION
Quite miraculously, there was an opening in the mangrove swamps and what looked like a river or harbor beyond. Such things are not to be expected when you have been very much bored by two days of unvaried contemplation of mangrove swamps on the one hand, and totally empty sea on the other. So we on the _Shikar_ -- most promising name for a devilish slow and unexciting tub -- tacked in. There were three of us and two native boys and we thought we were being very daring and reckless, coasting down the China Sea in a fifty-footer.