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When the taskmaster urges the coolies to do their best, one of these "hot-foot" boats chugs along in calm water at a five-knot gait, but ordinarily three knots an hour is the normal speed. On the left bank of the river and close to Canton is a large leper village, where all native craft approaching the city have to pay a "Leper toll."

The wind was blowing from the westward at the time, a five-knot breeze; the weather was clear and the sea had gone down, leaving nothing but the swell from the blow of the preceding day.

There too was Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy. "A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of hours." He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his cockleshell and pulled for the cutter. A lantern-Jawed fellow, named Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip, and tanned complexion a regular hard-weather bird received us.

Just as the vessel had threaded her way through numerous ocean steamers and foreign gun-boats anchored in the stream, and was slowly approaching the hulk alongside which she was to be made fast, an enormous raft of timber, bearing a whole village of huts and a considerable population of raft navigators, caught by the swirling eddy caused by a freshet from the River Han, which 200 yards above this point was pouring at right angles into the mighty Yangtse's five-knot current, bore swiftly down on the steamer, threatening to strike her amidships and either pin her to the hulk or crush her against the stone-faced bund, when she must have been immediately sunk.

All we had to fear for was the merchant vessels which we had re-taken, and which were two or three miles astern of us, with all the sail that they could carry. It was a five-knot breeze, and the water quite smooth, which was very favourable for the line-of-battle ship and ourselves, but not for the merchant vessels, which, with their cargoes, required more wind to propel them through the water.

This was particularly exasperating, since, the wind having dropped to about a five-knot breeze, we had been slowly but perceptibly gaining on her for the last three or four hours; and now, when at length there appeared a prospect of overtaking her, a chance to elude us in the fog had presented itself.

"We were racing by this time. There was nothing in the world to see only the fog, which had turned, within the last minute, to dusk; and nothing to feel except that we were racing down between the walls of it like a stick caught in a mill heat. Worse it was; we were driving down full tilt with a five-knot tide under us. If we struck there was one consolation; the end would come soon.

"Polly, my girl, there's no use trying to beat up in the teeth of a gale with a five-knot current against one," she exclaimed, as, dropping down into out big arm-chair and undoing her bonnet-strings and the red handkerchief she wore round her neck, she threw her bonnet over the back of her head. "I'm dead beat with to-day's work, and shall be worse to-morrow.

These chaps were ahead, astern, to windward, and to leeward; and, what was worse, they had just wind enough to suit their purposes, there being about a five-knot breeze. It was evident that the craft acted in concert, and that they were desperately bent on our capture, having closed around us in this manner in the night.

A plaguey job we had carrying it all out, but here it is ship-shape at last, and the lugger floats like a skimming dish, with scarce ballast enough to stand up to a five-knot breeze. 'Any signs of the Fairy Queen? asked the smuggler. 'None. Long John is down at the water's edge looking out for her flash-light. This wind should bring her up if she has rounded Combe-Martin Point.