lace the district potentate
assured me in a private chit, which I could not read, when he laid his
gunboat at my disposal.

This, he said, would take me up very quickly. In his second note,
wherein he apologized that indisposition kept him from calling
personally upon me--this, of course, was a lie--he said he would feel it
an honor if I would be pleased to accept the use of his contemptible
boat. But T'ong whispered that the law uses these terms in China, and
that nobody would be more disappointed than the Chinese magistrate if I
_did_ take advantage of his unmeaning offer. So I took a _wu-pan_, and
the following night, when pulling into the shadows of the Sui-fu pagoda,
cold and hungry, I cursed my luck that I had not broken down the useless
etiquette which these Chinese officials extend towards foreigners, and
taken the fellow's gunboat.

The _wu-pan_, they swore to me, would be ready to leave at 3:30 a.m. the
day following. My boy did not venture to sleep at all. He stayed up
outside my bedroom door--I say bedroom, but actually it was an apartment
which in Europe I would not put a horse into, and the door was merely a
wide, worm-eaten board placed on end. In the middle of the night I heard
a noise--yea, a rattle. The said board fell down, inwards, almost upon
me. A light was flashed swiftly into my eyes, and desultory remarks
which suddenly escaped me were rudely interrupted by shrill screams. My
boy was singing.

"Master," he cried, pulling hard-heartedly at my left big toe to wake
me, "come on, come on; you wantchee makee get up. Have got two o'clock.
Get up; p'laps me no wakee you, no makee sleep--no b'long ploper. One
man makee go bottomside--have catchee boat. This morning no have got
tea--no can catch hot water makee boil."

And soon we were ready to start. Punctually to the appointed hour we
were at the bottom of the steep, dark incline leading down to the river
bank.

But my reckonings were bad.

The _laoban_ and the other two youthful members of the half-witted crew
had not yet taken their "chow," and this, added to many little
discrepancies in their reckoning and in mine, kept me in a boiling rage
until half-past six, when at last they pushed off, and nearly capsized
the boat at the outset. The details of that early morning, and the
happenings throughout the long, sad day, I think I can never
forget--from the breaking of tow-lines to frequent stranding on the
rocks and sticking on sandbanks, the or