s
the old chap had not killed us at the first start off, it occurred to me
that he had merely taken us prisoners with the view of getting a heavy
ransom for us by-and-by, being led to the belief that we might be
important personages on account of his seeing us followed after we
landed from the gunboat, by the cutter's crew.

Our stalwart bluejackets appeared to his little, rat eyes, no doubt,
like the retinue of a mandarin with a peacock's feather in his tail at
the least; and this impression had, probably, been confirmed by the fact
of our being such young fellows, which was a proof of what "big" men we
would be when grown-up! Thinking this, I was in no ways alarmed. On
the contrary, I chuckled greatly when I recollected what a widely
different value the captain or first lieutenant would attach to a couple
of harum-scarum midshipmen to the estimation in which this wily old
kidnapper evidently held us; glorying in the great sell awaiting him
when he came in his bland innocence to exchange our poor carcases for
hard cash!

This anticipation so pleased me, that I began to interest myself in the
scenes through which we passed to our as yet unknown destination.

The one great drawback to my enjoyment of this amusement was that there
was precious little to look at, the country being fiat and dreary in the
extreme, and consisting apparently of an endless plain, dotted here and
there with heaps of earth, like mud-pies magnified, with the black Peiho
serpentining through it in its snake-like curves.

Such are the surroundings of Tientsin, which means "A heavenly spot!"

Burying places we met with at regular intervals, for we could easily
tell what they were from the ends of the square box coffins peeping out
of the soil that only half covered them, while the bones of the departed
frequently covered the earthy track our conductors traversed, which it
would have been a vile libel to have called a road.

Occasionally, we came near a collection of huts, with conical roofs
resembling the form of the extinguisher usually employed in connection
with a bedroom candlestick.

"Yellow hat," however, would not allow the palanquin bearers to stop at
any of these villages, as I supposed the huts represented, our
procession not coming to a halt until late in the afternoon; when, on
arriving at a place which, in addition to these huts had a pagoda or
josshouse, the old rascal grunted a little louder than usual to our
bearers and they