XVI. The Gold and the Pirates
XVII. The Art of Thirkle
XVIII. Big Stakes in a Big Game
XIX. "One Man Less in the Forecastle Mess"
XX. The Last




CHAPTER I

MISSIONARY AND RED-HEADED BEGGAR


Captain Riggs had a trunk full of old logbooks, and he said any of them
would make a better story than the _Kut Sang_. The truth of it was, he
didn't want me to write this story. There were things he didn't wish to
see in type, perhaps because he feared to read about himself and what had
happened in the old steamer in the China Sea.

"Folks don't care nothing about cargo-boats," he would say, taking his
pipe out of his mouth and shaking his head gravely, whenever I hinted
that I would like to tell of our adventure of the _Kut Sang_. "They want
yarns of them floating hotels called liners, with palm-gardens in 'em and
bands playing at their meals and games and so on going from eight bells
to the bos'n's watch.

"It was mostly fighting in the _Kut Sang_, and the mess you and me and
poor Harris and the black boy there got into wouldn't be just the quiet
sort of reading folks want these days. It was all over in a night and a