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 the drug, of which, as
an old stager, he could consume great quantities without being
stupefied, the idea of the occult power of the goddess, never absent
from his mind, was turned completely upside down. When free from the
fumes of opium nobody could have been more respectful to the Josses,