as the
brazen clamor of a death cymbal. One of China's four
hundred millions had died in the night; now his spirit
was being escorted to the seventh heaven of his blessed
forefathers, by the death cymbal, clashing with a sober
din to drive the devils away from his late abode.

The shadow of the life-boat was rather unaccountably
attenuated; Peter turned around and looked into the
bland, unsmiling face of Jen, a Chinese deck-boy.
Pig-tails were coming back in style again. About six inches
of wispy, purple-black braid extended downward from
Jen's white cap. His face was quite yellow, and his
eyes were green. An understandable light came and
flickered across their satiny surface as Peter looked
inquiringly into them.

"Wanchee my?" he asked.

The deck-boy took a cautious and all inclusive look
of the broad, gray deck, bending head to look past the
giant funnels, the first of which stood about twenty
feet forward of them.

"Stay allatime on _King Asia_?" inquired the
Chinese, moiling his hands together and bowing slightly.

Peter gave him a blue-eyed, indolent stare.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. "What's on your mind, Jen?"

"You tell me what going do," replied the yellow
one meaningly. "Can do?"

"Mebbe can do," replied Peter, folding his hands.
"You run up to the place on Jen Kee Road as soon as
you catchee sampan. Tell man-man if I decide to do
anything I will drop in and tell him. You don't know,
Jen, but he knows that my word is good. If I decide to
go up-river I'll tell man-man. If I decide to do
nothing, I'll say nothing to man-man."

"Allee light, allee light," said Jen, backing away a
few steps. "You tell man-man, eh?"

As Peter watched the retreating skinny shoulders
bob up and down as they went away from him toward
the after ladder, he felt just a little more undecided than
he had five minutes earlier. He went into the wireless-room,
to straighten up the apparatus before locking the
door for the visit in Shanghai.

As he was locking the tool-box--the Chinese river
thieves would steal anything they could lay hands
on--he heard his name called in a silvery voice accompanied
by a man's pleasant laugh, and he went out on deck to
find that Mr. Andover, with the twins in tow, was all
dressed up for a trip ashore.

The twins and Anthony Andover were passengers,
bound on a sight-seeing trip through the East, and as
Peter Moore was a very impressionable young man, it
is only natural t