From pricking his way across the Tartar plains, and probing in the Dead Sea and eating its fruits, just to know that living crustaceae could be found in one and pulpy flesh in the other, our Launfal, looking for the Sangreal in chariot-wheels, wound his devious way to the Flowery Kingdom, having tried a stroke or two at pearl-diving, and given some valuable hints, that were wasted, in Red Sea fishing and the Suez Canal.  The sleepy Celestial seasons had gone flowering their way to paradise, and the opium-smuggler and her sycee silver lay safe and swallowed in ribs and jowl of quicksand.  Our American proposed to have it up by the locks.  Two things said Nay—­the coral insect, which was using it in its architectural designs, and the hungry quicksand.  Worst of all, the American could not find it.  They hid the bulky vessel in hills of sand, and after two months’ labor in submarine armor the speculator was beaten.  “Get a coolie,” said a resident China merchant, and he did.

Every seaport city of China is a twin.  It is two cities—­one inland, narrow-streeted, paved with rubble stones; the other at sea, floating on bamboo reeds.  The amphibious inmates of the marine town never go ashore, but are a species of otter or seal.  Besides, they are first-class thieves, as well as cowardly, cruel pirates and wreckers.  They will steal the sheathing from a copper-bottomed vessel in broad daylight, and at night a guard-boat is necessary for protection.  They will defy a sentry on shipboard—­steal his ship from under him while he is wondering what he is set to guard.  They are all expert divers, as familiar with the sea-bottom as with their own ugly little hovels.  Such a native was found, and for a dollar spotted the submerged vessel in her matrix of sand and coral.

“Now set a guard-boat,” said the Englishman, “or he will steal the line, to get another dollar for finding the smuggler again.”

But the want of experts defeated the plan, after all.  It was necessary to use a petard to lay bare the treasure, and no one had the necessary skill.  When the American consented to lost time and defeat the cyclone threw another spoil in his way.  The East like the West Indies is the brooding-place of storms, which in gyratory coils, like a lasso thrown wide and large, go twisting north by west.  It caught a French frigate in the loop, and flung her poor bones on the coral reefs, and the hungry sand absorbed her.  It is a peculiarity of those seas.  But she was found, and the petard, like a huge axe wielded by a giant’s arms, cut into her treasure-house and rescued it.  The American’s expenses for a journey round the world were paid.