The Manitowoc Pilot

It has surely fallen to the lot of few men to come near starving to death in a land of plenty, with over $900 in gold in their pocket-nay, by reason of that very fact. I had shipped at Rangoon on board a steamer bound for Shanghai, says a writer in the London Standard. When I signed she was flying Jardine's flag at the main but I believe she carried the ensign of every nation and half of the house flags of the world in her signal locker. An opium smuggler I was prepared to find her but that her chief business on the waters was piracy of the vilest sort and unredeemed by a glint of romance came upon me certainly as a revelation. We attacked no ships as far as I know, but, handled with marvelous skill and knowledge of the intricate coast navigation, she would run in after nightfall among the rocks and banks where one would expect a sailing craft to take the bottom, while shrieks, flames, the report of firearms and clash of steel would testify to the descent of my delectable shipmates upon one or another of the numerous fishing villages which fringe the shores of the China seas.

After four months' durance I struck a blow for liberty. My little hoard of morphia-jealously guarded toward this eventuality-deepened the narcotism in which the whole crew lay steeped after a ghastly debauch as we rode at anchor and, forsaking all my goods and chattels and seizing in lieu such moneys as I could find, I dropped into the dingey and pulled off, shoeless, hatless, arrayed only in a shirt, trousers and belt, containing the above named sum (close on £200), hoping to reach a German gunboat which had been sighted in the offing earlier in the day. But the night was thick and in less than an hour I found myself close in shore. The question of what to do was speedily settled by the boat capsizing among the breakers, leaving me no alternative but to land. Day was breaking and I lay till next morning in a tomb cut above the road in the hill side and for the next three weeks I nearly perished for lack of nourishment, not daring to exhibit a gold piece, for I had no weapon and would certainly have been robbed and murdered. I would gladly have thrown away all but one piece, but there was no single small coin in the sum total, and the result would have been the same.

Though a good walker at that age (I had made a record of twenty miles not long before and could cover 30 a week without a blister) I accomplished no more than 200 miles in twenty-two days-traveling only by night and hiding in tombs or ditches all day, often rushing back to my last deserted lair in terror of the advancing sun when no suitable place of concealment hove in sight. With paddy and plantains snatched here and there I managed to exist during those awful weeks. China is not regarded as a terrestrial paradise by those Europeans whom fate malign has compelled to sojourn there: but Walhalla was never hailed with greater ecstasy by the world-worn pilgrim than was that celestial sink by myself. Toward the twentieth day the smell of meat cooking absolutely overcame me one morning and at the peril of my life I emerged into the light of day and laid felonious hands and teeth on what I believed was part of a baked cat, in the temporary absence of the legitimate landlord thereof.