him to leave word behind, he was mourned over for dead till,
after eight months, his first letter arrived from Talcahuano. It

was short, and contained the statement: "We had very fine weather
on our passage out." But evidently, in the writer's mind, the

only important intelligence was to the effect that his captain
had, on the very day of writing, entered him regularly on the

ship's articles as Ordinary Seaman. "Because I can do the work,"
he explained. The mother again wept copiously, while the remark,

"Tom's an ass," expressed the emotions of the father. He was a
corpulent man, with a gift for sly chaffing, which to the end of

his life he exercised in his intercourse with his son, a little
pityingly, as if upon a half-witted person.

MacWhirr's visits to his home were necessarily rare, and in the
course of years he despatched other letters to his parents,

informing them of his successive promotions and of his movements
upon the vast earth. In these missives could be found sentences

like this: "The heat here is very great." Or: "On Christmas day
at 4 P. M. we fell in with some icebergs." The old people

ultimately became acquainted with a good many names of ships, and
with the names of the skippers who commanded them -- with the

names of Scots and English shipowners -- with the names of seas,
oceans, straits, promontories -- with outlandish names of

lumber-ports, of rice-ports, of cotton-ports -- with the names of
islands -- with the name of their son's young woman. She was

called Lucy. It did not suggest itself to him to mention whether
he thought the name pretty. And then they died.

The great day of MacWhirr's marriage came in due course,
following shortly upon the great day when he got his first

command.
All these events had taken place many years before the morning

when, in the chart-room of the steamer Nan-Shan, he stood
confronted by the fall of a barometer he had no reason to

distrust. The fall -- taking into account the excellence of the
instrument, the time of the year, and the ship's position on the

terrestrial globe -- was of a nature ominously prophetic; but the
red face of the man betrayed no sort of inward disturbance.

Omens were as nothing to him, and he was unable to discover the
message of a prophecy till the fulfilment had brought it home to

his very door. "That's a fall, and no mistake," he thought.
"There must be some uncommonly dirty weather knocking about."

The Nan-Shan was on her way from the southward to the treaty port
of Fu-chau, with some cargo in her lower holds, and two hundred

Chinese coolies returning to their village homes in the province
of Fo-kien, after a few years of work in various tropical

colonies. The morning was fine, the oily sea heaved without a
sparkle, and there was a queer white misty patch in the sky like

a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed with Chinamen, was full
of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over

with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind, and the
heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared

over the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each
other; a few slept on hatches, while several small parties of six

sat on their heels surrounding iron trays with plates of rice and
tiny teacups; and every single Celestial of them was carrying

with him all he had in the world -- a wooden chest with a ringing
lock and brass on the corners, containing the savings of his

labours: some clothes of ceremony, sticks of incense, a little
opium maybe, bits of namelessrubbish of conventional value, and

a small hoard of silver dollars, toiled for in coal lighters, won
in gambling-houses or in petty trading, grubbed out of earth,

sweated out in mines, on railway lines, in deadlyjungle, under
heavy burdens -- amassed patiently, guarded with care, cherished

fiercely.
A cross swell had set in from the direction of Formosa Channel

about ten o'clock, without disturbing these passengers much,
because the Nan-Shan, with her flat bottom, rolling chocks on

bilges, and great breadth of beam, had the reputation of an
exceptionally steady ship in a sea-way. Mr. Jukes, in moments of

expansion on shore, would proclaim loudly that the "old girl was
as good as she was pretty." It would never have occurred to

Captain MacWhirr to express his favourable opinion so loud or in
terms so fanciful.

She was a good ship, undoubtedly, and not old either. She had
been built in Dumbarton less than three years before, to the

order of a firm of merchants in Siam -Messrs. Sigg and Son. When
she lay afloat, finished in every detail and ready to take up the

work of her life, the builders contemplated her with pride.
"Sigg has asked us for a reliableskipper to take her out,"

remarked one of the partners; and the other, after reflecting for
a while, said: "I think MacWhirr is ashore just at present." "Is

he? Then wire him at once. He's the very man," declared the
senior, without a moment's hesitation.

Next morning MacWhirr stood before them unperturbed, having
travelled from London by the midnight express after a sudden but

undemonstrative parting with his wife. She was the daughter of a
superior couple who had seen better days.

"We had better be going together over the ship, Captain," said
the seniorpartner; and the three men started to view the

perfections of the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and from her
keelson to the trucks of her two stumpy pole-masts.

Captain MacWhirr had begun by taking off his coat, which he hung
on the end of a steam windless embodying all the latest

improvements.
"My uncle wrote of you favourably by yesterday's mail to our good

friends -- Messrs. Sigg, you know -and doubtless they'll continue
you out there in command," said the juniorpartner. "You'll be

able to boast of being in charge of the handiest boat of her size
on the coast of China, Captain," he added.

"Have you? Thank 'ee," mumbled vaguely MacWhirr, to whom the
view of a distant eventuality could appeal no more than the

beauty of a wide landscape to a purblind tourist; and his eyes
happening at the moment to be at rest upon the lock of the cabin

door, he walked up to it, full of purpose, and began to rattle
the handle vigorously, while he observed, in his low, earnest

voice, "You can't trust the workmen nowadays. A brand-new lock,
and it won't act at all. Stuck fast. See? See?"

As soon as they found themselves alone in their office across the
yard: "You praised that fellow up to Sigg. What is it you see in

him?" asked the nephew, with faint contempt.
"I admit he has nothing of your fancy skipper about him, if

that's what you mean," said the elder man, curtly. "Is the
foreman of the joiners on the Nan-Shan outside? . . . Come in,

Bates. How is it that you let Tait's people put us off with a
defective lock on the cabin door? The Captain could see directly

he set eye on it. Have it replaced at once. The little straws,
Bates . . . the little straws. . . ."

The lock was replaced accordingly, and a few days afterwards the
Nan-Shan steamed out to the East, without MacWhirr having offered

any further remark as to her fittings, or having been heard to
utter a single word hinting at pride in his ship, gratitude for

his appointment, or satisfaction at his prospects.
With a temperament neither loquacious nor taciturn he found very

little occasion to talk. There were matters of duty, of course
-- directions, orders, and so on; but the past being to his mind

done with, and the future not there yet, the more general
actualities of the day required no comment -- because facts can

speak for themselves with overwhelming precision.
Old Mr. Sigg liked a man of few words, and one that "you could be

sure would not try to improve upon his instructions." MacWhirr
satisfying these requirements, was continued in command of the