glishman, "or he will steal the
line, to get another dollar for finding the smuggler again."

But the want of experts defeated the plan, after all. It was necessary
to use a petard to lay bare the treasure, and no one had the necessary
skill. When the American consented to lost time and defeat the cyclone
threw another spoil in his way. The East like the West Indies is the
brooding-place of storms, which in gyratory coils, like a lasso thrown
wide and large, go twisting north by west. It caught a French frigate
in the loop, and flung her poor bones on the coral reefs, and the
hungry sand absorbed her. It is a peculiarity of those seas. But she
was found, and the petard, like a huge axe wielded by a giant's arms,
cut into her treasure-house and rescued it. The American's expenses
for a journey round the world were paid.

I have heard a sufficiently incredible story of a man submerged in
a Chinese junk and under water twelve hours, yet taken out alive. A
Chinese junk is the nightmare of marine architecture. It is owned
in partnership by a company, but there is this difference from an
ordinary charter-party. Each man owns his share or allotment of the
vessel, and it is divided off into actual compartments or boxes made
water-proof; and each one of these pigeon-holes the hong or merchant
owns and stocks to suit himself. All open out upon the upper deck,
and are battened down--sometimes with a glass skylight if used as a
chamber. The structure in junk form is the thing's proper registry,
since any departure from the ancient model would subject her to heavy
taxation as an alien vessel. [2] It is a very effectual mode of
preventing any improvement in shipbuilding among the Chinese.

One of these clumsy arks went on the rocks in a typhoon, and was
covered over her deck, leaving, however, the projecting skylight on
or near a level with the surface. The hong was in this cuddy-hole,
frantic between personal loss and personal peril. Suddenly there was a
jar and a crash, and the sea beat over her. Fortunately, the skylight
was closed water-tight, but, unfortunately, some of the spars and
rigging blocked up the exit, even if he had dared the venture. The
bolts of the sea barred him in.

But Chinese wreckers and Chinese thieves are on the alert. Wattai, or
some such queer piratical Celestial with devilish propensities, went
for the spoil, settling the salvage by arithmetic of his own. The
wreck was removed from the skylight, and u