Precious little comfort I had in her, though, which is why I remember
her so well, and why I never shall forget her. If she had made Hong-Kong
in five days, her name would be lost in the memory of countless other
steamers, and there would be no tale to tell. But now she is the
_Kut Sang_, and every time I whisper the two words to myself I live once
more aboard her.

Rajah is with me--inherited, I might say, from Captain Riggs. Perhaps he
keeps my memory keen on the old days, for how could I forget with the
black boy stalking about the house--half the time in his bare feet and
his native costume, which I rather encourage--for his _sarong_ matches
the curtains of my den and adds a bit of colour to my colourless
surroundings.

I am quite sure that if Captain Riggs were still alive he would agree
that the story should begin with my first sight of the missionary and the
little red-headed man, so I will launch the narrative with an account of
how I first met the Rev. Luther Meeker.

He was in the midst of a litter of nondescript baggage on the Manila mole
when I came ashore from a rice-boat that had brought me across the
China Sea from Saigon. The first glance marked him as a missionary, for
he wore a huge crucifix cut out of pink shell, and as he hobbled about on
the embankment it bobbed at the end of a black cord hung from his neck.

Quaint and queer he was, even for the Orient, where queerness in men and
things is commonplace and accepted as a part of the East's inseparable
sense of mystery. With his big goggles of smoked glass he reminded one of
some sea-monster, an illusion dispelled by his battered pith helmet with
its faded sky-blue _pugri_ bound round its crown, the frayed ends falling