early on the following morning. His last thought,
as he dropped off to sleep, was that he was now Captain Frobisher, of
the _Chih' Yuen_; and that it would not be his fault if he did not make
her name famous in Chinese Naval history.

He awoke in the morning, however, utterly unrefreshed, for he had slept
badly. A vague feeling of foreboding and a strong presentiment of
disaster had oppressed him throughout the night, and his dreams had been
haunted by a thin, yellow face, with long, attenuated, drooping
moustache--a face out of which peered a pair of eyes, glowing like flame
and with hideous possibilities of evil shining in their black depths.
The face was the face of Prince Hsi, the youngest member of the Council.

The splendid, keen, invigorating air of a Chinese morning soon blew the
cobwebs away from Frobisher's brain, and half an hour after leaving his
bed he was smiling to himself at his own folly in allowing Prince Hsi's
evil countenance to affect him to such an extent as to spoil his rest.
The man couldn't help being born with a face like that; and perhaps an
ugly exterior might in reality hide a very kind and gentle soul. By the
time that Frobisher had arrived at the wharf where the _Su-chen_ was
lying, he had completely forgotten the existence of "the man with the
snake's eyes", as he afterwards came to call him.

The interpreter promised by Wong-lih had duly presented himself to
Frobisher on board the _San-chan_ that morning, and the Englishman very
soon began to find the man's services invaluable. With his assistance,
the _Su-chen_ was easily located, and Frobisher at once boarded her and
made himself known, and read his commission to her officers and crew
through the medium of Quen-lung, the interpreter. A very quiet, decent
set of men they seemed to be, to all appearance. They gave him such
information as he asked for, quickly and without hesitation; and, so far
as he could learn on such brief acquaintance, seemed thoroughly
conversant with their duties. He made enquiries about the amount of
water and provisions that was aboard, satisfied himself that there was a
sufficiency to serve them for the expedition, and then went into the
question of the quantity of ammunition remaining on board.

This did not at all satisfy his requirements; for he found that,
although there appeared to be plenty of small-arm ammunition, there was
very little belonging to the machine-guns and the guns in the batteries;