“Yes,” was as good an answer as any.

“You’re pretty cold ... your teeth are chattering.  Here, take a swig o’ this.”

And the sentinel reached me a flask of whiskey from which I drew a nip.  Unaccustomed as I was to drink, it nearly strangled me.  It went all the way down like fire.  Then it spread with a pleasant warmth all through my body....

“Stay here to-night ... rather uncomfortable bed, but at least it’s dry.  No one ’ull bother you ... in the morning Captain ——­, who is in charge of the commissariat here, might give you a job.”

* * * * *

That next morning Captain ——­ gave me a job as mate, eighty dollars Mex. and a place to sleep, along with others, in a Compound, and find my food at my own expense....

Mate, on a supply-launch that went in and out to and from the transports, that were continually anchoring in the bay.  Our job was to keep the officers’ mess in supplies....

“And, if you stick to your job six months,” I was informed, “you’ll be entitled to free transportation back to San Francisco.”

My captain was a neat, young Englishman, with the merest hint of a moustache of fair gold.

Our crew—­two Chinamen who jested about us between themselves in a continuous splutter of Chinese.  We could tell, by their grimaces and gestures ... we rather liked their harmless, human impudence ... as long as they did the work, while we lazed about, talking ... while up and down the yellow sweep of the Pei-ho the little boat tramped.

* * * * *

“It’s too bad you didn’t arrive on the present scene a few weeks, sooner,” said my young captain ... “it was quite exciting here, at that time.  I used to have to take the boathook and push off the Chinese corpses that caught on the prow of the boat as they floated down, thick ... they seemed to catch hold of the prow as if still alive.  It was uncanny!”

* * * * *

We slept, rolled up in our blankets, on the floor of a Chinese compound ... adventurers bound up and down the river, to and from Tien-Tsin and Woo-shi-Woo and Pekin ... a sort of caravanserai....

* * * * *

Though it was the fall of the year and the nights were cold enough to make two blankets feel good, yet some days the sun blazed down intolerably on our boat, on the river....

When we grew thirsty the captain and myself resorted to our jug of distilled water.  I had been warned against drinking the yellow, pea-soup-like water of the Pei-ho....

But one afternoon I found our water had run out.

So I took the gourd used by the Chinese crew, and dipped up, as they did, the river water.

The captain clutched me by the wrist.

“Don’t drink that water!  If you’d seen what I have, floating in it, you’d be afraid!”

“What won’t hurt a Chinaman, won’t hurt me,” I boasted....