“O dear!  We’ve left Hongkong, and Father Somazzo couldn’t get me away from my uncle,” was his first thought.  “And last night I dreamed that he did get me away, and that Brother Onufrio and Peppo were with me, but I can’t remember where.—­O dear, we are out at sea and on the way to Australia, or God knows where.”

Willy was almost in tears.  Father Somazzo’s comforting words came to his mind, then kneeling down for a short morning prayer, he commended himself to the care of his guardian angel.  Strengthened by the thought that God’s holy guardian angels are companions and protectors at sea as well as on land, he was rising from his knees just as his uncle came into the room.

“What, up and dressed!  By the seven sleepers of old, I verily believe that you have been praying!  That’s what they set you to doing at the pension, but you’ll soon get over it; a seaman has no time for any such superfluous business as that.”

“Superfluous to say one’s prayers?” questioned Willy in utmost surprise, opening wide his big blue eyes.  “The good Fathers prayed every day, and used to say that ’he who knows not how to pray, the sea will teach to pray’.  What will become of us, if God and his angels do not watch over and guard us?”

“Oh, dear me!  You talk just like the preaching Brothers,” laughed the Captain, in a way that made the boy shudder.

“Well, for aught that I care keep on praying to your guardian angel to watch over you, but now go into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee and a biscuit or two.  Hurry yourself.  In five minutes be ready for work and report on deck to the first officer.”

In the meantime the boatswain had started for the steerage, where three hundred Chinamen were packed like herrings on the floor and in the berths along the sides of the room.  When he opened the trap-door to go down the stairs, the poisonous stench which assailed his nostrils almost knocked him down.  “By all the great sharks in the sea,” he cried angrily, “I believe it would be easier to breathe in the bottom of the ocean than down there with those pig-tailed Chinamen!  He!  I don’t want to go down there.  Be quick, and send the interpreter up here,” he called.

A babel of Chinese words came from the unventilated room which was lighted by an old kerosene lamp, and the crowd pushed to the gangway to get up on deck.  The boatswain thundered “Back”, and to make his words emphatic as well as intelligible, drew his revolver.  The men went back, and Lihoa brought his nephew, the small Peppo, to the foot of the gangway.  “Tell him that he is to let us come out on deck before we suffocate in this vile hole,” commanded Lihoa.

As soon as Peppo began to tell in English what he had been told to say, the boatswain cried out:  “Ha, ha!  So you are the interpreter, you little pigmy?  Why, that’s all right.  How lucky!  Come up.  I am looking for you, but your pig-tailed cousins will have to stay down there.  They won’t suffocate for awhile; the air of the steerage is thicker and more nourishing than that on deck.”