shortly upon the great day when he got his first command.

All these events had taken place many years before the morning when, in
the chart-room of the steamer Nan-Shan, he stood confronted by the
fall of a barometer he had no reason to distrust. The fall--taking into
account the excellence of the instrument, the time of the year, and
the ship's position on the terrestrial globe--was of a nature ominously
prophetic; but the red face of the man betrayed no sort of inward
disturbance. Omens were as nothing to him, and he was unable to discover
the message of a prophecy till the fulfilment had brought it home to his
very door. "That's a fall, and no mistake," he thought. "There must be
some uncommonly dirty weather knocking about."

The Nan-Shan was on her way from the southward to the treaty port of
Fu-chau, with some cargo in her lower holds, and two hundred Chinese
coolies returning to their village homes in the province of Fo-kien,
after a few years of work in various tropical colonies. The morning was
fine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer white
misty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed
with Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails,
sprinkled over with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind,
and the heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared
over the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each other;
a few slept on hatches, while several small parties of six sat on their
heels surrounding iron trays with plates of rice and tiny teacups; and
every single Celestial of them was carrying with him all he had in the
world--a wooden chest with a ringing lock and brass on the corners,
containing the savings of his labours: some clothes of ceremony,
sticks of incense, a little opium maybe, bits of nameless rubbish of
conventional value, and a small hoard of silver dollars, toiled for in