don't want to hear about your bills of exchange and kegs of Spanish
dollars and solid cargoes of tea run back direct. Why, with your Canton
and India agents and sight drafts the China service is like dealing with
a Boston store."

Laurel saw that her father was assuming the expression of restrained
annoyance habitual when the elder contrasted old shipping ways with new.
"Unfortunately," he said, "the patient Chinaman will no longer exchange
silks and lacquer and teas for boiled sea slugs. He has learned to demand
something of value."

"Why, damn it, William," the other exploded, "nothing's more valuable to
a Chinese than his belly. They'll give eighteen hundred dollars a pecul
for birds' nests any day. As for your insinuation that we used to diddle
them--I never ran opium up from India to rot their souls. And when the
Chinese Government tried to stop it there's the British commercial
interests forcing it on them with cannon in 'forty-two.

"Look at the pepper we brought into Salem--" he was, Laurel realized with
intense interest, growing beautifully empurpled; "--lay right off the
beach at Mukka and did business with the Dato himself. We forded the bags
on the crew's backs across a river with muskets served in case the bloody
heathen drew their creeses. When we made sail everything was running over
with pepper--the boats and forecastle and cabins and between decks."

"Well, father, the heroic times are done, of course; I can't say that I'm
sorry. I shouldn't like to finance a voyage that reached out to three
years and depended on the captain's picking up six or seven cargoes."

The old man rose; and, muttering a plainly uncomplimentary period about