Chinaman, gazing sad and speechless into the darkness of the hatchway,
seemed to stand at the head of a yawning grave.

"No catchee rain down there--savee?" pointed out Jukes. "Suppose all'ee
same fine weather, one piecie coolie-man come topside," he pursued,
warming up imaginatively. "Make so--Phooooo!" He expanded his chest and
blew out his cheeks. "Savee, John? Breathe--fresh air. Good. Eh? Washee
him piecie pants, chow-chow top-side--see, John?"

With his mouth and hands he made exuberant motions of eating rice and
washing clothes; and the Chinaman, who concealed his distrust of this
pantomime under a collected demeanour tinged by a gentle and refined
melancholy, glanced out of his almond eyes from Jukes to the hatch and
back again. "Velly good," he murmured, in a disconsolate undertone, and
hastened smoothly along the decks, dodging obstacles in his course. He
disappeared, ducking low under a sling of ten dirty gunny-bags full of
some costly merchandise and exhaling a repulsive smell.

Captain MacWhirr meantime had gone on the bridge, and into the
chart-room, where a letter, commenced two days before, awaited
termination. These long letters began with the words, "My darling wife,"
and the steward, between the scrubbing of the floors and the dusting
of chronometer-boxes, snatched at every opportunity to read them. They
interested him much more than they possibly could the woman for whose
eye they were intended; and this for the reason that they related in
minute detail each successive trip of the Nan-Shan.

Her master, faithful to facts, which alone his consciousness reflected,
would set them down with painstaking care upon many pages. The house
in a northern suburb to which these pages were addressed had a bit of
garden before the bow-windows, a deep porch of good appearance,
coloured glass with imitation lead frame in the front door. He paid
five-and-forty pounds a year for it, and did not think the rent too
high, because Mrs. MacWhirr (a pretentious person with a scraggy
neck and a disdainful manner) was admittedly ladylike, and in the
neighbourhood considered as "quite superior." The only secret of her
life was her abject terror of the time when her husband would come home
to stay for good. Under the same roof there dwelt also a daughter called
Lydia and a son, Tom. These two were but slightly acquainted with their
father. Mainly, they knew him as a rare but privileged visitor, who of
an evening smoked his pi