must, and the manuscript will be a comfort to me when I am old and my
memory and imagination begin to fail. Not that I ever expect to forget,
because that would be a calamity; but I want to put down the events of
the day and night in the _Kut Sang_ while they are fresh in my mind.

How well I can see in a mental vision the whole murderous plot worked
out! Certain parts of it flash on me at off moments, while I am reading a
book or watching a play or talking with a friend, and every trivial
detail comes out as clearly as if it were all being done over again in a
motion picture. The night gloom in the hall brings back to me the
'tween-decks of the old tub of a boat; the green-plush seats of a
sleeping-car remind me of the _Kut Sang's_ dining-saloon, and even a
bonfire in an adjacent yard recalls the odour of burned rice on the
galley fire left by the panic-stricken Chinese cook.

I know the very smell of the _Kut Sang_. I caught it last week passing a
ship-chandler's shop, and it set my veins throbbing again with the sense
of conflict, and I caught myself tensing my muscles for a death grapple.
To me the _Kut Sang_ is a personality, a sentient being, with her own
soul and moods and temper, audaciously tossing her bows at the
threatening seas rising to meet her. She is my sea-ghost, and as much a
character to me as Riggs or Thirkle or Dago Red.

The deep, bright red band on her funnel gave her a touch of coquetry, but
she had the drabness of senility; she was worn out, and working, when
she should have gone to the junk pile years before. But her very
antiquity charmed me, for her scars and wrinkles told of hard service in
the China Sea; and there was an air of comfort about her, such as
one finds in an ancient house that has sheltered several generations.