The Jacket (The Star-Rover)

known the sun, he was paunched and weak-legged.  Yet he had once been a fine man.  The noble forehead attested that.  But the eyes were bleared and weak-lidded, the lips twitching and trembling from the various excesses in which he indulged, which excesses, as I was to learn, were largely devised and pandered by Yunsan, the Buddhist priest, of whom more anon.

In our sea-garments we mariners were a motley crew, and motley was the cue of our reception.  Exclamations of wonder at our strangeness gave way to laughter.  The ki-sang invaded us, dragging us about, making prisoners of us, two or three of them to one of us, leading us about like go many dancing boars and putting us through our antics.  It was offensive, true, but what could poor sea-cunies do?  What could old Johannes Maartens do, with a bevy of laughing girls about him, tweaking his nose, pinching his arms, tickling his ribs till he pranced?  To escape such torment Hans Amden cleared a space and gave a clumsy-footed Hollandish breakdown till all the Court roared its laughter.

It was offensive to me who had been equal and boon companion of Kim for many days.  I resisted the laughing ki-sang .  I braced my legs and stood upright with folded arms; nor could pinch or tickle bring a quiver from me.  Thus they abandoned me for easier prey.

“For God’s sake, man, make an impression,” Hendrik Hamel, who had struggled to me with three ki-sang dragging behind, mumbled.

Well might he mumble, for whenever he opened his mouth to speak they crammed it with sweets.

“Save us from this folly,” he persisted, ducking his head about to avoid their sweet-filled palms.  “We must have dignity, understand, dignity.  This will ruin us.  They are making tame animals of us, playthings.  When they grow tired of us they will throw us out.  You’re doing the right thing.  Stick to it.  Stand them off.  Command respect, respect for all of us—”

The last was barely audible, for by this time the ki-sang had stuffed his mouth to speechlessness.

As I have said, I had the will and the fearlessness, and I racked my sea-cuny brains for the wit.  A palace eunuch, tickling my neck with a feather from behind, gave me my start.  I had already drawn attention by my aloofness and imperviousness to the attacks of the ki-sang , so that many were looking on at the eunuch’s baiting of me.  I gave no sign, made no move, until I had located him and distanced him.  Then, like a shot, without turning head or body, merely by my arm I fetched him an open, back-handed slap.  My knuckles landed flat on his cheek and jaw.  There was a crack like a spar parting in a gale.  He was bowled clean over, landing in a heap on the floor a dozen feet away.

There was no laughter, only cries of surprise and murmurings and whisperings of “Yi Yong-ik.”  Again I folded my arms and stood with a fine assumption of haughtiness.  I do believe that I, Adam Strang, had among other things the soul of an actor in me.  For see what follows.  I was now the most significant of our company.  Proud- eyed, disdainful, I met unwavering the eyes upon me and made them drop, or turn away—all eyes but one.  These were the eyes of a young woman, whom I judged, by richness of dress and by the half-dozen women fluttering at her back, to be a court lady of distinction.  In truth, she was the Lady Om, princess of the house of Min.  Did I say young?  She was fully my own age, thirty, and for all that and her ripeness and beauty a princess still unmarried, as I was to learn.

She alone looked me in the eyes without wavering until it was I who turned away.  She did not look me down, for there was neither challenge nor antagonism in her eyes—only fascination.  I was loth to admit this defeat by one small woman, and my eyes, turning aside, lighted on the disgraceful rout of my comrades and the trailing ki-sang and gave me the pretext.  I clapped my hands in the Asiatic fashion when one gives command.

“Let be!” I thundered in their own language, and in the form one addressee underlings.

Oh, I had a chest and a throat, and could bull-roar to the hurt of ear-drums.  I warrant so loud a command had never before cracked the sacred air of the Emperor’s palace.

The great room was aghast.  The women were startled, and pressed toward one another as for safety.  The ki-sang released the cunies and shrank away giggling apprehensively.  Only the Lady Om made no sign nor motion but continued to gaze wide-eyed into my eyes which had returned to hers.

Then fell a great silence, as if all waited some word of doom.  A multitude of eyes timidly stole back and forth from the Emperor to me and from me to the Emperor.  And I had wit to keep the silence and to stand there, arms folded, haughty and remote.

“He speaks our language,” quoth the Emperor at the last; and I swear there was such a relinquishment of held breaths that the whole room was one vast sigh.

“I was born with this language,” I replied, my cuny wits running rashly to the first madness that prompted.  “I spoke it at my mother’s breast.  I was the marvel of my land.  Wise men journeyed far to see me and to hear.  But no man knew the words I spoke.  In the many years since I have forgotten much, but now, in Cho-Sen, the words come back like long-lost friends.”

An impression I certainly made.  The Emperor swallowed and his lips twitched ere he asked:

“How explain you this?”

“I am an accident,” I answered, following the wayward lead my wit had opened.  “The gods of birth were careless, and I was mislaid in a far land and nursed by an alien people.  I am Korean, and now, at last, I have come to my home.”

What an excited whispering and conferring took place.  The Emperor himself interrogated Kim.

“He was always thus, our speech in his mouth, from the time he came out of the sea,” Kim lied like the good fellow he was.

“Bring me yang-ban’s garments as befits me,” I interrupted, “and you shall see.”  As I was led away in compliance, I turned on the ki-sang .  “And leave my slaves alone.  They have journeyed far and are weary.  They are my faithful slaves.”

In another room Kim helped me change, sending the lackeys away; and quick and to the point was the dress-rehearsal he gave me.  He knew no more toward what I drove than did I, but he was a good fellow.

The funny thing, once back in the crowd and spouting Korean which I claimed was rusty from long disuse, was that Hendrik Hamel and the rest, too stubborn-tongued to learn new speech, did not know a word I uttered.

“I am of the blood of the house of Koryu,” I told the Emperor, “that ruled at Songdo many a long year agone when my house arose on the ruins of Silla.”

Ancient history, all, told me by Kim on the long ride, and he struggled with his face to hear me parrot his teaching.

“These,” I said, when the Emperor had asked me about my company, “these are my slaves, all except that old churl there”—I indicated Johannes Maartens—“who is the son of a freed man.”  I told Hendrik Hamel to approach.  “This one,” I wantoned on, “was born in my father’s house of a seed slave who was born there before him.  He is very close to me.  We are of an age, born on the same day, and on that day my father gave him me.”

Afterwards, when Hendrik Hamel was eager to know all that I had said, and when I told him, he reproached me and was in a pretty rage.

“The fat’s in the fire, Hendrik,” quoth I.  “What I have done has been out of witlessness and the need to be saying something.  But done it is.  Nor you nor I can pluck forth the fat.  We must act our parts and make the best of it.”

Taiwun, the Emperor’s brother, was a sot of sots, and as the night wore on he challenged me to a drinking.  The Emperor was delighted, and commanded a dozen of the noblest sots to join in the bout.  The women were dismissed, and we went to it, drink for drink, measure for measure.  Kim I kept by me, and midway along, despite Hendrik Hamel’s warning scowls, dismissed him and the company, first requesting, and obtaining, palace lodgment instead of the inn.

Next day the palace was a-buzz with my feast, for I had put Taiwun and all his champions snoring on the mats and walked unaided to my bed.  Never, in the days of vicissitude that came later, did Taiwun doubt my claim of Korean birth.  Only a Korean, he averred, could possess so strong a head.

The palace was a city in itself, and we were lodged in a sort of summer-house that stood apart.  The princely quarters were mine, of course, and Hamel and Maartens, with the rest of the grumbling cunies, had to content themselves with what remained.