o it?_ Either a great wrath
or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked past, asked us to lie
down on our shelves, where we had our beds, to give him room, and then
set to work.

In twenty-five minutes we had a three-course meal (all out of the same
pot, but no matter), and onwards to our destination we fed royally. In
parting with the men after our safe arrival at Chung-king, we left with
them about seven-eighths of the picul--and were not at all regretful.

I should not like to assert--because I am telling the truth here--that
our boat was bewilderingly roomy. As a matter of fact, its length was
some forty feet, its width seven feet, its depth much less, and it drew
eight inches of water. Yet in it we had our bed-rooms, our
dressing-rooms, our dining-rooms, our library, our occasional
medicine-room, our cooking-room--and all else. If we stood bolt upright
in the saloon amidships we bumped our heads on the bamboo matting which
formed an arched roof. On the nose of the boat slept seven men--you may
question it, reader, but they did; in the stern, on either side of a
great rudder, slept our boy and a friend of his; and between them and
us, laid out flat on the top of a cellar (used by the ship's cook for
the storing of rice, cabbage, and other uneatables, and the
breeding-cage of hundreds of rats, which swarm all around one) were the
captain and commodore--a fat, fresh-complexioned, jocose creature,
strenuous at opium smoking. Through the holes in the curtain--a piece of
sacking, but one would not wish this to be known--dividing them from us,
we could see him preparing his globules to smoke before turning in for
the night, and despite our frequent raving objections, our words ringing
with vibrating abuse, it continued all the way to Chung-king: he
certainly gazed in disguised wonderment, but we could not get him to say
anything bearing upon the matter. Temperature during the day stood at
about 50 degrees, and at night went down to about 30 degrees above
freezing point. Rains were frequent. Journalistic labors, seated upon
the upturned saucepan aforesaid, without a cushion, went hard. At night
the Chinese candle, much wick and little wax, stuck in the center of an
empty "Three Castles" tin, which the boy had used for some days as a
pudding dish, gave us light. We generally slept in our overcoats, and as
many others as we happened to have. Rats crawled over our uncurtained
bodies, and woke us a dozen times each night b