this life, of course. Look a' me—I'm fat!” The captain spoke in a rough, faintly blustering tone, perhaps in a nervous response to the well-modulated voice of his mate, “Must make even more difference to you—the way you've lived. And at that, after all, you ain't a slave to the river.”
“No.... in a sense, I'm not.” The mate fell silent.
There were, of course, vast differences in the degrees of misfortune among the flotsam and jetsam of the coast. Captain Benjamin, now, had a native wife and five or six half-caste children tucked away somewhere in the Chinese city of Shanghai.
“We've gut quite a bunch aboard this trip,” offered the captain.
“Indeed?”
“One or two well-known people. There's our American millionaire, Dawley Kane. Took four outside cabins. His son's with him, and a secretary, and a Japanese that's been up with him before. Wonder if it's a pleasure trip—or if it means that the Kane interests are getting hold up the river. It might, at that. They bought the Cantey line, you know, in nineteen eight. Then there's Tex Connor, and his old sidekick the Manila Kid, and a couple of women schoolteachers from home, and six or eight others—customs men and casuals. And Dixie Carmichael—she's aboard. Quite a bunch! And His Nibs gets on tomorrow at Nanking.”
“Kang, you mean?”
“The same. There's a story that he's ordered up to Peking. They were talking about it yesterday at the office.”
“Do you think he's in trouble?”
“Can't say. But if you ask me, it don't look like such a good time to be easy on these agitators, now does it? And they tell me he's been letting 'em off, right and left.”
The mate stood musing, holding to the rail. “It's a problem,” he replied, after a little, rather absently.
“The funny thing is—he ain't going on through. Not this trip, anyhow. We're ordered to put him off at his old place, this side of Huang Chau. Have to use the boats. You might give them a look-see.”
“They've gossiped about Kang
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