to keep them above water; and to the bottom they would
undoubtedly have gone but for the skill and coolness of a dozen English
sailors, who brought them over the ocean in safety. Well, if there be
any one thing in the world that this extraordinary craft is not at all
like, that thing is a ship of any kind. So narrow, so long, so
grotesque; so low in the middle, so high at each end, like a China
pen-tray; with no rigging, with nowhere to go to aloft; with mats for
sails, great warped cigars for masts, gaudy dragons and sea-monsters
disporting themselves from stem to stern, and _on_ the stern a gigantic
cock of impossible aspect, defying the world (as well he may) to produce
his equal,--it would look more at home at the top of a public building,
or at the top of a mountain, or in an avenue of trees, or down in a
mine, than afloat on the water. As for the Chinese lounging on the deck,
the most extravagant imagination would never dare to suppose them to be
mariners. Imagine a ship's crew, without a profile among them, in gauze
pinafores and plaited hair; wearing stiff clogs a quarter of a foot
thick in the sole; and lying at night in little scented boxes, like
backgammon men or chess-pieces, or mother-of-pearl counters! But by
Jove! even this is nothing to your surprise when you go down into the
cabin. There you get into a torture of perplexity. As, what became of
all those lanterns hanging to the roof when the Junk was out at sea?
Whether they dangled there, banging and beating against each other, like
so many jesters' baubles? Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen
arms, enshrined in a celestial Punch's Show, in the place of honour,
ever tumbled out in heavy weather? Whether the incense and the
joss-stick still burnt before her, with a faint perfume and a little
thread of smoke, while the mighty waves were roaring all around? Whether
that preposterous tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread,
as being a convenient maritime instrument for walking about the decks
with in a storm? Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables
were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why
not? Whether anybody on the voyage ever read those two books printed in
characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the Mandarin
passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life
before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his
own (where he is now perpetually w