The Kup-shui-moon is a great place for pirates, and as I was courting sleep some of the passengers were discussing the probability of our being taken by them, and hung up by the thumbs and great toes to make us send for an outrageous ransom. They did not use _Hai traák_, the Chinese word for “sea-robbers,” but _Pi-long_, which is a Chinesified form of the English word “pirate,” and _La-lì-loong_, which is doubtless their form of the Portuguese word _ladrone_. Like the Italians with their _bifstecca_ for our abrupt “beefsteak,” the Chinese, when they adopt or use European words, throw them into an extended mellifluous form, in which it is difficult to recognise the original sound. _La-lì-loong_ is a good illustration of this, and so also is _pe-lan-dia_, by which they mean “brandy.” The estuary of the Pearl river and the neighbouring coast have long been famous for pirates, and the passengers were not without some cause of apprehension. I have seen these professional pirate junks watching in the Kup-shui-moon at one time, and only a few mails ago there came out accounts of an attempt to take an English steamer in or close to it. Not less than their names, _Pi-long_ and _La-lì-loong_, the pirates of China are a result of foreign contact, and as yet give no signs of diminishing either in numbers or in power. However, no sea-robbers disturbed our repose. Next morning I found we had passed the strait, and were drawing under the shadow of Victoria Peak. MARRIAGE BELLS.