mock and out at the other, and I'll look as early-rising-proud as
yourself. Alister! Alister dear!--"

Through all this the engineer made no sign, and it struck me how wise he
was, so I pulled the hammock round me again and fell asleep; not for
long, I fancy, for those intolerable sandflies woke me once more before
Dennis had turned in.

I looked out and saw him still at the window, his eyes on a waning
planet, his cheek resting on the little glove laid in his right hand,
and singing more sweetly than any nightingale:

"Youth must with time decay,
Eileen aroon!
Beauty must fade away,
Eileen aroon!
Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star,
Eileen aroon!"

CHAPTER XV.

"Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar."
BRET HARTE.

Alister did more than pick pink-pale oleanders by the dyke side that
morning. His business with the captain was soon despatched, and in the
course of it he "fore-gathered," as he called it, with the man of
business who had spoken to us on the night of the great fire, and whose
own warehouse was in ruins. He proved to be a Scotchman by birth, and a
man of energy (not a common quality in the tropics), and he was already
busy about retrieving his fortune. The hasty repair of part of the
building, in which to secure some salvage, and other similar matters,
was his first object; and he complained bitterly of the difficulty of
inducing any of the coloured gentlemen to do a "fair day's work for a
fair day's wage," except when immediate need pressed them. They would
then work, he said, but they would not go on working till the job was
done, only till they had earned enough wages to take another idle
"spell" upon.

Several Chinamen were already busy among the ruins of the burnt houses,
as we saw, and it was Chinese labour that Alister's friend had resolved
to employ; but he seemed to think that, though industrious, those
smiling, smooth-faced individuals, who looked as if they had come to
life off one of my mother's old tea-cups, were n