There it was, spread largely on both banks, the Oriental capital which
had as yet suffered no white conqueror; an expanse of brown houses of
bamboo, of mats, of leaves, of a vegetable-matter style of architecture,
sprung out of the brown soil on the banks of the muddy river. It was
amazing to think that in those miles of human habitations there was not
probably half a dozen pounds of nails. Some of those houses of sticks
and grass, like the nests of an aquatic race, clung to the low shores.
Others seemed to grow out of the water; others again floated in long
anchored rows in the very middle of the stream. Here and there in the
distance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered great
piles of masonry, King's Palace, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated,
crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almost
palpable, which seemed to enter one's breast with the breath of one's
nostrils and soak into one's limbs through every pore of one's skin.

The ridiculous victim of jealousy had for some reason or other to stop
his engines just then. The steamer drifted slowly up with the tide.
Oblivious of my new surroundings I walked the deck, in anxious, deadened
abstraction, a commingling of romantic reverie with a very practical
survey of my qualifications. For the time was approaching for me to
behold my command and to prove my worth in the ultimate test of my
profession.

Suddenly I heard myself called by that imbecile. He was beckoning me to
come up on his bridge.

I didn't care very much for that, but as it seemed that he had something
particular to say I went up the ladder.

He laid his hand on my shoulder and gave me a slight turn, pointing with