I wonder who will be the next to finish the game and depart with a
sack of coal.
"Oh, this is nothing, sir," Mr. Mellaire remarked to me cheerfully as
we strolled the poop during the first watch. "I was once on a voyage
on a tramp steamer loaded with four hundred Chinks--I beg your
pardon, sir--Chinese. They were coolies, contract labourers, coming
back from serving their time.
"And the cholera broke out. We hove over three hundred of them
overboard, sir, along with both bosuns, most of the Lascar crew, and
the captain, the mate, the third mate, and the first and third
engineers. The second and one white oiler was all that was left
below, and I was in command on deck, when we made port. The doctors
wouldn't come aboard. They made me anchor in the outer roads and
told me to heave out my dead. There was some tall buryin' about that
time, Mr. Pathurst, and they went overboard without canvas, coal, or
iron. They had to. I had nobody to help me, and the Chinks below
wouldn't lift a hand.
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