THE SIAMESE CAT
cross-counter. The sailor staggered back with chin uplifted, swayed, for an interminable space, as though undecided which way to fall, then gently collapsed like a limp bolster.
After dumbfounded silence, a roar drowned the engineer's counting; but above the hubbub shrilled the voice of Scarlett's second, who, with an idiot face of glee, pirouetted in a skirt of towels, chanting:
Yankee doodle doodle doodle
Doodle doodle doodle …
The figure on the floor had not moved. Two men were kneeling beside it. One looked up suddenly, and said:
"He's killed him."
Long afterwards Owen recalled the fellow's face, the matter-of-fact tone, the stillness and scared looks in the room, the scolding singsong of coolies chattering in the road below. Nor did he soon forget the equal shock of relief when an
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