ing
a point. Leaning his white sleeves on the rail, cigar in one fist,
Tauchnitz volume in the other, he roared down over the side a passage of
prose, from which his visitors caught only the words "Ginger Dick" and
"Peter Russet," before mirth strangled him.

"God bless a man," he cried, choking, "that can make a lonesome old
beggar laugh, out here! Eh, what? How he ever thinks up--But he's took
to writing plays, they tell me. Plays!" He scowled ferociously. "Fat lot
o' good they are, for skippers, and planters, and gory exiles! Eh, what?
Be-george, I'll write him a chit! _I'll_ tell him! Plays be damned; we
want more stories!"

Red and savage, he hurled the book fluttering into the sea, then swore
in consternation.

"Oh, I say!" he wailed. "Fish her out! I've not finished her. My
intention was, ye know, to fling the bloomin' cigar!"

Heywood, laughing, rescued the volume on a long bamboo.

"Just came out on the look-see, captain," he called up. "Can't board
you. Plague ashore."

"Plague be 'anged!" scoffed the little captain. "That hole's no worse
with plague than't is without. Got two cases on board, myself--coolies.
Stowed 'em topside, under the boats.--Come up here, ye castaway! Come
up, ye goatskin Robinson Crusoe, and get a white man's chow!"

He received them on deck,--a red, peppery little officer, whose shaven
cheeks and close gray hair gave him the look of a parson gone wrong, a
hedge-priest run away to sea. Two tall Chinese boys scurried about with
wicker chairs, with trays of bottles, ice, and cheroots, while he barked
his orders, like a fox-terrier commanding a pair of solemn dock-rats.
The white men soon lounged beside the wheel-house.

"So you brought Mrs. Forrester," drawled Heywood.

Rudolph, wondering if they saw him wince, listened with painful
eagerness. But the captain disposed of that subject very simply.

"_She's_ no good." He stared up at the grimy awning. "What I'm thinking
is, will that there Dacca babu at Koprah slip me through his blessed
quarantine for twenty-five dollars. What?"

Their talk drifted far away from Rudolph, far from China itself, to
touch a hundred ports and islands, Cebu and Sourabaya, Tavoy and
Selangor. They talked of men and women, a death at Zamboanga, a birth at
Chittagong, of obscure heroism or suicide, and fortunes made or lost;
while the two boys, gentle, melancholy, gliding silent in bright blue
robes, spread a white tablecloth, clamped it with shining b