included a small percentage of downright roughs.  But a tall man, dressed in ordinary yachtman’s clothes, stood smoking on deck, and that was the present writer.  The rough Englishmen did not know that I had been used to the company of the wildest desperadoes that live on earth.  They only knew that I came from the Mission ship, and they passed the word.  Every rowdy that came up was warned, and one poor rough, who chanced to blurt out a very common and very nasty Billingsgate word, was silenced by a moralist, who observed, “Cheese it.  Don’t cher see the Mission ship bloke?” I watched like a cat, and I soon saw that the ordinary hurricane curses were restrained on my account, simply because I came from the vessel where all are welcome—­bad and good.  For four hours I was saluted in all sorts of blundering, good-humoured ways by the men as they came up.  Little scraps of news are always intensely valued at sea, and it pleased me to see how these rude, kind souls tried to interest me by giving me scraps of information about the yacht which I had just left.  “She was a-bearing away after the Admiral, sir, when we passed her.  It’s funny old weather for her, and I see old Jones a-bin and got the torps’l off on her”—­and so on.  Several of the fellows shouted as they went, “Gord bless you, sir.  We wants you in the winter.”  No doubt some of them would, at other times, have used a verb not quite allied to bless; but I could see that they were making an attempt to show courtesy toward an agency which they respect, and though I remained like a silent Lama, receiving the salutes of our grimy, greasy friends, I understood their thoughts, and, in a cynical way, I felt rather thankful to know that there are some men at least on whom kindness is not thrown away.  The captain of the carrier said, “I never seen ’em so quiet as this for a long time, but that was because they seed you.  They cotton on to the Mission—­the most on ’em does.”

This seems to me a very pretty and significant story.  Any one who knows the British Rough—­especially the nautical Rough—­knows that the luxury of an oath is much to him, yet here a thorough crowd of wild and excited fellows become decorous, and profuse of civilities, only because they saw a silent and totally emotionless man smoking on the deck of a steam-carrier.  On board the steamer, I noticed that the same spirit prevailed; the men treated me like a large and essentially helpless baby, who must be made much of.  Alas! do not I remember my first trip on a carrier, when I was treated rather like a bundle of coarse fish?  The reason for the alteration is obvious, and I give my very last experience as a most significant thing of its kind.  Observe that the roughest and most defiant of the irreligious men are softened by contact with an agency which they regard as being too fine or too tiresome for their fancy, and it is these irregular ruffians who greet the Mission smacks with the loudest heartiness when they swing into the midst of a fleet.