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The King-Shing showed herself a remarkably good sea-boat, but desperately slow. No device could get more than eight knots out of her, and this was much above her average. We encountered one or two violent storms, in which she behaved wonderfully. One night the wind, after veering all round the compass with vivid lightning and thunder, settled in the south-west and blew a perfect hurricane.
All washing of dishes, etc., was performed on a stage outside the galley so that it might be kept perfectly clean. The proper allowance for each mess was delivered in front. Close to the cook-house was a water-tank of wood, painted in imitation of bricks, and capable of holding three thousand gallons. Such was the King-Shing junk, and such are most of the craft of the Celestials.
It holds the wind better, and rarely splits, because it never shakes in the wind. So large and heavy was the mainsail of the King-Shing, that it required forty men with the aid of the capstan to raise it. Without the capstan eighty men would have been needed. It had eighteen reefs. The sails were reefed by being lowered, which precluded any necessity for going aloft.
I was vastly amused, during my voyage in the King-Shing, by the superstitions of her crew. Their devotion to their idols was indeed truly edifying. A religious man, according to his lights, was Sam-Sing, and rigidly punctual in the daily observance of incense-burning, gong-banging, and other rites supposed to be propitiatory of the deity.
The vessel in which I now found myself, the King-Shing, was of about seven hundred tons. She was built entirely of teak, and her skipper, or Ty Kong, as he is called, alleged that she was more than a hundred years old, and said that one of her crew who had recently died, had served in her for fifty years.
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