on board, partitioned off, on the main deck, by
themselves, with all sorts of dirty packages
wondrous to behold: pillows made of bamboo,
matting, raw pork, seedy clothes, pine-apples, old
shoes and dried fish packed inside lanterns,
umbrellas, giblets carried by a string, and collections
of such miscellaneous household things generally,
as you see in the last lots of a sale catalogue.

The English passengers occupied the deck
under the awning, and the saloon. We started
punctually, and glided out of the harbour
between many green islands, with small villages
in their nooks and bays, wherein very suspicious
pirate craft were lying ready to dart out of their
holes, like spiders, upon any hapless little junk
that got caught in the meshes of the shallows.

We went pleasantly on, for two hours or so,
without the scenery changing, until we emerged,
by the Lantao passage, as it is called, into open
water, and then we prepared for "tiffin." I
say "prepared," for the passengers all looked to
their revolvers, and placed them within reach on
the table; whilst the English and Portuguese
crew stood at the different entrances on the main
deck with loaded muskets and drawn swords.

"What does all this mean?" I asked.

"We have too many Chinese on board,"
replied Captain Castella. "They are nearly six to
every one of us; so we do not wish to be served
as the Queen was served a year and a half ago."

"And how was that?"

"The steamer was captured, and the crew and
passengers murdered. Mr. Osmond Cleverley
was the only one who escaped, and you will
meet him at Macao to-night. He will tell you
his own story much better than I can."

The excitement gave us all an appetite, and
the pale ale (I suspect) gave us valour. The
eatables were good and well cooked, and the
tiffin was a success, and passed off in safety.
When it was over we all went upon deck. The
crew and passengers discharged their fire-arms
at birds and other objects, to show that they
had been really loaded, and then we sat and
chatted in the laziness of repletion, until we
arrived about four in the afternoon at Macao.

Macao looks as Weymouth would do after a
very long residence in Portugal. Its shore is
crescent-shaped; but edged with purely
continental buildings and convents. There is a
Praja, or promenade, along its border, whereon
appear Portuguese troops, and now and then a
band. You hear convent bells ringing the
Angelus in the still eventide; priests, apparently
without insides, slink about and look at you
sideways; there is a Teatro San Somebody, and
you wonder what on earth has become of China.
You could not feel more bewildered if, one day
turning out of Belgrave-square, you entered the
Pontine Marshes; although even that might not
be so great an antithesis.

It happens to us all to witness a great many
rows in the course of our lives, of various phases
—physical, as on the old Jenny Lind nights,
amongst the superior classes (whose manners
and customs I am sometimes permitted the
delight of studying); moral, as when Reverend
Boanerges Gong meets Reverend S. Bookay on
the platform; domestic, as in a strictly family
party after the reading of a will; general, as at
the annual meeting of any company you please,
started by an inventive genius to make himself
secretary thereof; Irish, as when Paddy O'Raggedy
— that broth of a boy— cries "Hurroo!"
and allows his native ready humour to run to
fracturing his friend's skull, or biting his nose
off; and patriotic, as when a lot of nature's
nobility, possessing nothing in the world, go in
for a division of property and universal suffrage.
But we have never had a clear notion of a
downright row, until we have dropped anchor off
Macao amongst the tanka girls.

The tanka is, as its name implies in Chinese,
an egg-shaped boat, little at the prow end, big
at the stern, and hooped over with arches of
bamboo and matting. It forms the home of
more than one hundred thousand of the amphibious
Cantonese; and these residences of the
wind stretch out on the Pearl River to Whampoa
and Macao, as our rows of clerks' houselets do
to Woolwich and Gravesend on the living stream
of the railway. This, however, is scarcely a
comparison. The tanka population is considered
so low as to be almost unworthy of a place in the
census. They live and marry amongst themselves;
and are as distinct from the Cantonese
proper, as the fishing inhabitants of Portel are
from the people of Boulogne.

As soon as the steamer nears Macao, the
tankas shoot out from the shore towards the
spot where they know she will anchor; and
their oars are plied so well, that their approach
assumes the air of a cutting-out expedition.
Throw a bun into the water of St. James's Park,
and the ducks will give you the best notion of
the manner of attack. One woman skulls
behind, and the other takes her place on the
forecastle, with a rope and a boat-hook, prepared for
the worst; and, as the entire fleet makes for the
sponsons of the steamer, when they meet the
row begins. A-moon, the belle of the tankas,
arrives first; and showing her beautiful white
teeth as she " chin-chins" the captain, makes
fast to our paddle-box, and then nods her pretty
head, over which she has lightly tied a red
handkerchief in that coquettish style which young
ladies who know they are nice-looking adopt
in the hall of the Opera when waiting for their
carriages to come up. But A-tye, who is a
sort of rival in good looks, skulls strenuously
up, and then with a good way on her boat,
ships her stern oar, runs forward, banging
between the tankas of A-moon and A-miu (who
is a terrible vixen, and, they say, can fight like a
cat, whence her name, which appropriately
signifies Mrs. Puss in Chinese), runs in well and
gains her place. A-miu immediately springs
on her, all claws set, and knocks her over into
the other boat. A-moon resents the intrusion
with a boat-hook, upon which A-tye seizes a
chopper, not her own, and cuts A-miu's tanka
adrift, which is immediately shoved out to sea by
A-yung, A-chung, A-lin, A-ming, and as many
more as you please.