rest in the deep--a ceremony we performed the day after our
escape--Richard was himself again, and the old careless buoyancy
swelled up once more.

Prayer-books had been omitted in our outfit, and we were at a loss for
the burial service. However, we laid our heads, or rather our memories
together, and most of us being able to recollect a scrap of it here
and there, we contrived to patch it up sufficiently to give our
unfortunate shipmates Christian burial. I should mention that another
of the wounded men died after our arrival at Tientsin, and was
interred in the English cemetery. He was the man who was first hit;
his name was Massinger, and he claimed to be a descendant of the
dramatist. He was known on board chiefly as "Hair-oil," from his
addiction to plastering his bushy black hair with some shiny and
odorous compound of that nature. Both his legs were broken by the shot
that struck him.

As to my friend Webster, adorned with a black eye, he never ceased,
during the remainder of the voyage, to declaim against Chubb's
foolhardiness and uphold his own proceedings on the eventful night.
For his own discomfiture he sought consolation in rum, protesting that
it was a miracle that any of us had survived to taste another drop of
that liquid comforter.

"But I'm a houtcast," he would wind up invariably, as his potations
overcame him; "that's where it is--who cares what a ---- houtcast
thinks?"

Chubb took no further notice of him than to laughingly threaten to put
him under arrest for mutiny. It must not be supposed that the
"houtcast's" behaviour on the occasion in question was due to any want
of courage. Escape seemed impossible; the risk of the attempt was
tremendous, and I am convinced that if the matter had been left to my
own judgment, I should not have dared it. But Chubb was one of those
men whom nothing can daunt, and who are never more completely in their
element than when running some desperate hazard.

CHAPTER II

We reached Tientsin without further mishap, and turned over our cargo
to Mr. H----'s agent, who disposed of it at a handsome profit, though
hardly sufficient, I thought, to warrant the risking of so valuable a
ship as the _Columbia_. We lay in the port about a week, to effect
the repairs rendered necessary by the Japanese gun practice.

At Tientsin a war council was sitting, and one morning Mr. Mac----, the
agent, came on board and informed us that he had received a
proposal for the