a bloody, bleedin' coward," returned another voice, in
surprise and disgust.

Someone spat on me. I was let up at last.... I staggered forward to my
bunk. My book had been handed back to me. It's a wonder I didn't throw
myself into the sea, in disgust over the queer fit that had come over
me. I lay half the night, puzzling ... was I a coward?

Not unless an unparalleled change had occurred in me. I had fought with
other children, when a boy ... had whipped two lads at once, when
working in the Composite factory, that time they spit into my book.

* * * * *

One day a fishing-junk hove into sight, just as if it had sailed out of
a Maxfield Parrish illustration,--swinging there in the mouth of a
blood-red sunset ... then, like magic, appeared another and another and
another....

"Fishing-junks," ejaculated the mate, "--pretty far out, too, but a
Chink'll risk his life for a few bleedin' cash ... and yet he won't
fight at all ... an' if you do him an injury he's like as not likely to
up an' commit suicide at your door, to get even!"

"That's a bally orful way to get even with a henemy!" exclaimed a
stoker, who sat on the edge of the forward hatch.

"I should say so, too!"

Then, far and faint, were heard a crew of Chinese sailors, on the
nearest junk, singing a curious, falsetto chantey as they hauled on a
bamboo-braced sail....

"A feller wot never travelled wouldn't bloody well believe they was
such queer people in the world," further observed the philosophic
coal-heaver.

* * * * *

Next morning the coast of China lay right against us, on the starboard
side ... we ran into the thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned
flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar,
from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to
a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as
they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit to be a
sculptor's model.

Their bodies shone in the sun like bronze. Several, fearing we might run
them down, as we clove straight through their midst, raised their arms
with a shout full of pleading and fright.

"What's the matter? are they trying to murder some of these poor chaps?"
I asked.

"No ... we're just having a little fun ... what's the life of a Chink
matter?"

* * * * *

"I say, if the Chinks up where the B