Such was the King-Shing junk, and such are most of the craft of the Celestials.  They would appear to be gradually coming round to Western ideas in the matter of ships, and in fact have done so entirely for war purposes, but the fashions of their ancestors are still good enough for most of them, and the junk is to be seen everywhere.  Not a mere thing of yesterday is the junk.  Vessels essentially similar to the one I have described were navigating the Chinese seas and rivers when the fleets of Rome and Carthage were contesting the supremacy of the Mediterranean, and long before.  Rome and Carthage, and many another mighty maritime power, have risen and passed away utterly, like bubbles, or dreams, but the Chinaman and his everlasting junk are still here.

The vessel belonged to some mandarins at Shanghai, who used it for trading to Cochin-China.  It had recently, however, been despatched with a cargo to Cheefoo, had been blown away north by a gale, and forced to run into the harbour at Port Arthur to escape the Japanese.  There it had lain until the place fell.  The crew numbered fifty-four, all told.

After floating off the sand-bank, and getting an offing, we were within the Gulf of Pechili, and determined to make for one or other of its ports, but on the first day we encountered a very heavy nor’-wester, which blew us far out of the Gulf.  When, after lasting a day and a night, the gale abated, we were well down the Yellow Sea, and the skipper, or Ty Kong, whose name was Sam-Sing, determined to hold on for the port where the junk’s owners dwelt.  I had no objection to make to this, nor had the mandarin, who possessed friends and relatives in the south.  The soldiers on board, however, were very discontented and mutinous, and as they considerably outnumbered the crew I began to fear trouble.  They were all from northern provinces and had no desire to go south.  Their language was scarcely intelligible even to their nominal countrymen.  The immense diversity of dialects in China is, in fact, a great hindrance to progress by preventing the unification of the people.  After some excited discussion they were prevailed upon to acquiesce by the solemn promise of the mandarin to make arrangements with the authorities for their return to their own parts, or failing that to send them back at his own expense; besides, the representation that to turn north again would most likely end in capture by the Japanese vessels, through whose present cruising-ground the gale had luckily blown us, had great weight.

I was vastly amused, during my voyage in the King-Shing, by the superstitions of her crew.  Their devotion to their idols was indeed truly edifying.  A religious man, according to his lights, was Sam-Sing, and rigidly punctual in the daily observance of incense-burning, gong-banging, and other rites supposed to be propitiatory of the deity.  He was also, however, greatly addicted to opium-smoking, and when under the influence of