ead contentedly, drawing a breath of satisfaction.

"Bimeby Hop Sing sendum body back China." He closed his eyes and lay
for a long time, worn out with the effort of speaking, as if asleep.
Suddenly he opened his eyes wide. "You no flogettee horse?"

"Four horses, Charlie. I'll remember."

He drooped once more, only to rouse again at the end of a few minutes
with:

"First-chop coffin, plenty much silver"; and again, a little later
and very feebly: "Six-piecee--band music--China music--four-piecee
gong--four."

"I promise you, Charlie," said Wilbur.

"Now," answered Charlie--"now I die."

And the low-caste Cantonese coolie, with all the dignity and calmness of
a Cicero, composed himself for death.

An hour later Wilbur and Moran knew that he was dead. Yet, though they
had never left the hammock, they could not have told at just what moment
he died.

Later, on that same afternoon, Wilbur, from the crow's-nest, saw the
lighthouse on Point Loma and the huge rambling bulk of the Coronado
Hotel spreading out and along the beach.

It was the outpost of civilization. They were getting back to the world
again. Within an hour's ride of the hotel were San Diego, railroads,
newspapers, and policemen. Just off the hotel, however, Wilbur could
discern the gleaming white hull of a United States man-of-war. With the
glass he could make her out to be one of the monitors--the "Monterey" in
all probability.

After advising with Moran, it was decided to put in to land. The report
as to the castaways could be made to the "Monterey," and Charlie's body
forwarded to his Tong in San Francisco.

In two hours' time the schooner was well up, and Wilbur stood by Moran's
side at the wheel, watching and studying the familiar aspect of Coronado
Beach.

"It's a great winter resort," he told her. "I was down here with a party
two years ago. Nothing has changed. You see that big sort of round wing,
Moran, all full of windows? That's the dining-room. And there's the
bathhouse and the bowling-alley. See the people on the beach, and the
girls in white duck skirts; and look up there by the veranda--let me
take the glass--yes, there's a tally-ho coach. Isn't it queer to get
back to this sort of thing after Magdalena Bay and the beach-combers?"

Moran spun the wheel without reply, and gave an order to Jim to ease off
the foresheet.

XII. NEW CONDITIONS

The winter season at the Hotel del Coronado had been unusually gay that
year,