the
organ during services and a little room to sleep in at the mission. What
is more, he lent me Skeats' edition of Chaucer, complete. And all the
time I was with him he proved a "good sport." He didn't take advantage
of my dependence on him to bother me so very much about God.

He took it for granted that I was a Christian, since I never discussed
religion with him.

* * * * *

It began to grow wearisome, pumping an organ for a living. And I had fed
myself full on Chaucer.

I began to yawn, behind the organ, over the growing staleness of life in
a sailors' mission. And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old
maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a heathen she
must convert.

* * * * *

"How'd you like a voyage to China?" the sky-pilot asked, one day.

Cathay ... Marco Polo ... Milton's description of the Chinese moving
their wheelbarrows along the land by means of sails ... many poetic
visions marched across my mind at the question.

"I'd like to, right enough."

"Then here's a chance for you," and he handed me a copy of the Bulletin,
pointing out an advertisement for cattlemen on the steamboat, _South Sea
King_, about to take a cargo of steers from Queensland to Taku, province
of Pechi-li, Northern China.

"What are they sending cattle away up there for?"

"Supplies for troops ... The Boxer outbreak, you know ... go down to the
number given in the advertisement, and I'm sure they'll sign you on as
cattleman, if you want the job."

"All right. I'll go now."

"No," looking me over dubiously, "you'd better not go there or anywhere
else, in your present rig ... you're too ragged to apply even for such
work ... hang around till morning, and I'll go home to-night and bring
you a decent coat, at least. Your coat is worse than your trousers ...
though _they_ are ravelled at the bottoms and coming through in the left
knee ... every time you take a step I can see a glint of white through
the cloth, and," walking round me in a tour of inspection, "the seat
might break through at any moment." All this was said without a glint of
humour in his eyes.

* * * * *

Next morning the sky-pilot came down very late. It was twelve. But he
had not forgotten me. "Here's the coat," and he solemnly unwrapped and
trailed before my astonished gaze a coat with a long, ministerial tail.
I put it on. The tail