People entertaining the smallest idea of doing things travel in nothing short of a kwadze, the orthodox houseboat, with several rooms and ordinary conveniences.  Ours was a wu-pan—­literally five boards.  We had no conveniences whatever, and the second morning out we were left without even a wash-basin.  As I was standing in the stern, I saw it swirling away from us, and inquiring through a peep-hole, heard the perplexing explanation of my boy.  Gesticulating violently, he told us how, with the wash-basin in his hand, he had been pushed by one of the crew, and how, loosened from his grasp, my toilet ware had been gripped by the river—­and now appeared far down the stream like a large bead.  The Other Man was alarmed at the boy’s discomfiture, ejaculated something about the loss being quite irreparable, and with a loud laugh and quite natural hilarity proceeded quietly to use a saucepan as a combined shaving-pot and wash-basin.  It did quite well for this in the morning, and during the day resumed its duty as seat for me at the typewriter.

Our boy, apart from this small misfortune, comported himself pretty well.  His English was understandable, and he could cook anything.  He dished us up excellent soup in enamelled cups and, as we had no ingredients on board so far as we knew to make soup, and as The Other Man had that day lost an old Spanish tam-o’-shanter, we naturally concluded that he had used the old hat for the making of the soup, and at once christened it as “consomme a la maotsi”—­and we can recommend it.  After we had grown somewhat tired of the eternal curry and rice, we asked him quietly if he could not make us something else, fearing a rebuff.  He stood hesitatingly before us, gazing into nothingness.  His face was pallid, his lips hard set, and his stooping figure looking curiously stiff and lifeless on that frozen morning—­the temperature below freezing point, and our noses were red, too!

“God bless the man, you no savee!  I wantchee good chow.  Why in the name of goodness can’t you give us something decent!  What on earth did you come for?”

“Alas!” he shouted, for we were at a rapid, “my savee makee good chow.  No have got nothing!”

“No have got nothing!  No have got nothing!” Mysterious words, what could they mean?  Where, then, was our picul of rice, and our curry, and our sugar?

“The fellow’s a swindler!” cried The Other Man in an angry semitone.  But that’s all very well.  “No have got nothing!” Ah, there lay the secret.  Presently The Other Man, head of the general commissariat, spoke again with touching eloquence.  He gave the boy to understand that we were powerless to alter or soften the conditions of the larder, that we were victims of a horrible destiny, that we entertained no stinging malice towards him personally—­but ... could he do 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.