“I am sure that we will have a pleasant passage in the Kut Sang,” he said.  “I am something of a literary man myself, Mr. Trenholm—­an exhaustive life of the saints, a shilling in paper covers, four shillings in cloth, with gilt title and frontispiece of me.  It is recommended by the Bishop of Salisbury, and in its class quite a standard work.

“Then I did some poems, chiefly on sacred subjects.  Not much as poetry, perhaps, judged by severe standards, but I am told they are regarded as marvels of piety and sweetness.  I may have a copy in my luggage, which I will show you after we are settled aboard the steamer.”

I let him ramble on like that, turning over in my mind the while all the schemes I intended to put into play to convince him I was really a spy, and when a boy brought a paper I fell upon the war news.

“Another Russian defeat,” I half moaned, and made out that I was dreadfully upset because the Japanese were winning battles.

He said he deplored war, and had a prejudice against the Japanese, and hoped they would lose, and praised the Russians as brave and pious.  When I expressed satisfaction at his views in order to prove my character as a Russian agent, we might have been mistaken by an observer for a couple of old friends.

He wearied me, however, with his chatter and efforts to make himself agreeable, and after the meal I escaped from him on the plea of business which must be attended to before the steamer sailed.

Leaving the walled city, I crossed the Bridge of Spain to the Escolta and took a stroll in Calle Rosario, where the Chinese merchants keep themselves in grateful shade with miles of awning.  After an hour of sight-seeing, I found myself in a square near the San Miguel Bridge.

There was a crowd gathered before a building, which I remember on account of the picture of a frigate painted upon the stucco wall and the great red letters spelling out: 

THE FLAGSHIP BAR

There had evidently been a fight; and coolies and natives, and Europeans in white, clustered at the door.  I joined the knot of people and pressed forward to see what was holding their attention, and saw the body of a big, foreign-looking man, half inside the door and half on the pavement, with his head outside.

His mouth was open, and from his upper lips drooped long, black moustaches, looking all the blacker for the ghastly pallor of his cheeks.  He had been stabbed in the back, and the spectators in the front of the group edged away to avoid the growing pool of blood on the sidewalk.

“Does anybody know who he is?” demanded a khaki-clad policeman, taking out a note-book.

“A sailor,” said an American in a white apron, who leaned out of the door.  “Drank whiskey and vermouth and talked like a squarehead.”

“Greek he was,” said a man with the appearance of a mariner.