The policeman urged him on to examine me.

“You called in at Rangoon?” he queried.

I nodded.  “We put our third mate ashore there.  Fever.”

If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should have answered,
“Enteric,” though for the life of me I didn’t know what enteric was. 
But he didn’t ask me.  Instead, his next question was:—­

“And how is Rangoon?”

“All right.  It rained a whole lot when we were there.”

“Did you get shore-leave?”

“Sure,” I answered.  “Three of us apprentices went ashore together.”

“Do you remember the temple?”

“Which temple?” I parried.

“The big one, at the top of the stairway.”

If I remembered that temple, I knew I’d have to describe it.  The gulf yawned for me.

I shook my head.

“You can see it from all over the harbor,” he informed me.  “You don’t need shore-leave to see that temple.”

I never loathed a temple so in my life.  But I fixed that particular temple at Rangoon.

“You can’t see it from the harbor,” I contradicted.  “You can’t see it from the town.  You can’t see it from the top of the stairway.  Because—­” I paused for the effect.  “Because there isn’t any temple there.”

“But I saw it with my own eyes!” he cried.

“That was in—?” I queried.

“Seventy-one.”

“It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887,” I explained.  “It was very old.”

There was a pause.  He was busy reconstructing in his old eyes the youthful vision of that fair temple by the sea.

“The stairway is still there,” I aided him.  “You can see it from all over the harbor.  And you remember that little island on the right-hand side coming into the harbor?” I guess there must have been one there (I was prepared to shift it over to the left-hand side), for he nodded.  “Gone,” I said.  “Seven fathoms of water there now.”

I had gained a moment for breath.  While he pondered on time’s changes, I prepared the finishing touches of my story.

“You remember the custom-house at Bombay?”

He remembered it.

“Burned to the ground,” I announced.

“Do you remember Jim Wan?” he came back at me.

“Dead,” I said; but who the devil Jim Wan was I hadn’t the slightest idea.

I was on thin ice again.

“Do you remember Billy Harper, at Shanghai?” I queried back at him quickly.

That aged sailorman worked hard to recollect, but the Billy Harper of my imagination was beyond his faded memory.

“Of course you remember Billy Harper,” I insisted.  “Everybody knows him.  He’s been there forty years.  Well, he’s still there, that’s all.”

And then the miracle happened.  The sailorman remembered Billy Harper.  Perhaps there was a Billy Harper, and perhaps he had been in Shanghai for forty years and was still there; but it was news to me.