steward had seen him fling himself into the white foam. I tore a
gas-buoy from its rack and tossed it toward the screw, in which
direction he must have been swept. A sailor ran to the bridge, the
whistle blew, and the ship shook as the engines ceased revolving,
and then reversed in stopping her. Orders were flung about fast. A man
climbed to the lookout as the first officer began to put a boat into
the water. The crew of it and the second officer were already at the
oars and the tiller as the ropes slid in the blocks. The passengers
came crowding from their cabins, where they were dressing for dinner,
and there were many expressions of surprise and slight terror. Death
aboard ship is terrible in its imminence to all. The buoy, with its
flaming torch, had drifted far to leeward, and the lookout could do no
more than follow its fainting light as the dark of the tropics closed
in. An hour the Noa-Noa lay gently heaving upon the mysterious waters
in which the despairing pundit had sought Nirvana, until the boat
returned with a report that it had picked up the buoy, but had seen no
sign of the man. Doubtless he had been swept into the propellers, but
if not quickly given release in their cyclopean strokes, he may have
watched for a few minutes our vain attempt to negative his fate. If so,
I imagine he smiled again, as when he gave me the god upon the tiger.

As they hoisted the boat to its davits, I found in the lantern light
his ancient volume, the "Analects of Confucius," and claimed it for
my own. It was the very boat he had been accustomed to sit under, and
he must have laid down the ancient philosopher to procure the gift for
me, his grim determination already made. I had caught a glimpse of him
Sunday morning listening to the Christian services conducted by the
captain in the social hall, and when I told the brooding captain that,
he was struck by the idea that perhaps some word of his preachment
might have come to Leung Kai Chu's mind in his agony in the waters,