at
seemed to be in trouble was little Lena, and in due course I perceived
that the health of the rag-doll was more than delicate. This object led
a sort of "in extremis" existence in a wooden box placed against the
starboard mooring-bitts, tended and nursed with the greatest sympathy
and care by all the children, who greatly enjoyed pulling long faces and
moving with hushed footsteps. Only the baby--Nicholas--looked on with a
cold, ruffianly leer, as if he had belonged to another tribe altogether.
Lena perpetually sorrowed over the box, and all of them were in deadly
earnest. It was wonderful the way these children would work up their
compassion for that bedraggled thing I wouldn't have touched with a pair
of tongs. I suppose they were exercising and developing their racial
sentimentalism by the means of that dummy. I was only surprised that
Mrs. Hermann let Lena cherish and hug that bundle of rags to that
extent, it was so disreputably and completely unclean. But Mrs. Hermann
would raise her fine womanly eyes from her needlework to look on with
amused sympathy, and did not seen to see it, somehow, that this
object of affection was a disgrace to the ship's purity. Purity, not
cleanliness, is the word. It was pushed so far that I seemed to detect
in this too a sentimental excess, as if dirt had been removed in
very love. It is impossible to give you an idea of such a meticulous
neatness. It was as if every morning that ship had been arduously
explored with--with toothbrushes. Her very bowsprit three times a week
had its toilette made with a cake of soap and a piece of soft flannel.
Arrayed--I _must_ say arrayed--arrayed artlessly in dazzling white paint
as to wood and dark green as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution
of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian
felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me
sometimes as an abominably real blot upon that ideal state.

I enjoyed it greatly, and on my part I brought a little mild excitement
into it. Our intimacy arose from the pursuit of that thief. It was in
the evening, and Hermann, who, contrary to his habits, had stayed on
shore late that day, was extricating himself backwards out of a little
gharry on the river bank, opposite his ship, when the hunt passed.
Realising the situation as though he had eyes in his shoulder-blades, he
joined us with a leap and took the lead. The Chinaman fled silent like
a rapid shadow on t