ough
fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab,
her brasses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one
clean spot in the picture--the ship's wash (all white) that
fluttered on a line stretched between the two masts. The half-nude
brown bodies of the crew informed Ah Cum that the schooner had come
up from the South Seas. The boiling under her stern, however, told
him nothing. He was not a sailor. It would not have interested him
in the least to learn that the tub ran on two powers--wind and oil.

Sampans with fish and fruit and vegetables swarmed about, while
overhead gulls wheeled and swooped and circled. One of the sampans
was hailed, and a rope-ladder was lowered. Shortly a man descended
laboriously. He was dressed immaculately in a suit of heavy
Shantung silk. His face was half hidden under a freshly pipeclayed
_sola topee_--sun-helmet. He turned and shouted some orders to the
Kanaka crew, then nodded to the sampan's coolies, who bore upon the
sweeps and headed for the Sha-mien.

Ah Cum turned to his own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub
was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had
shifted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of
three who were coming down the packet gang-plank. The trio
exhibited that indecisive air with which Ah Cum was tolerably
familiar. They were looking for a guide. Forthwith he presented his
card.

The Reverend Henry Dolby had come to see China; for that purpose he
had, with his wife and daughter, traversed land and sea to the
extent of ten thousand miles. Actually, he had come all this
distance simply to fulfil a certain clause in his contract with
Fate, to be in Canton on this particular day.

Meantime, as the doctor was splitting his breakfast orange, he
heard a commotion in his office, two rooms removed: volleys of
pidgin English, one voice in protest, the other dominant. This was
followed by heavy footsteps, and in another moment the dining-room
door was flung open.

The doctor jumped to his feet. "Mac, you old son-of-a-gun!"

"Got a man's breakfast?" McClintock demanded to know.

"Tom! Hey, Tom!" The Chinese cook thrust his head into the dining
room. "Those chops, fried potatoes, and buttered toast."

"Aw light!"

The two old friends held each other off at arms' length for
inspection; this proving satisfactory, they began to prod and
pummel one another affectionately. No hair to fall awry, no p