Jow saw no reason why they should not ship this man provided he kept quiet, and did not betray them. It seems that upon their arrival at Sse-tsein a few days previous to the one upon which the sailor was captured, Mo had landed with his only man to receive the cash for some salt which they had smuggled on shore upon a previous visit. The person to whom they had sold it, instead of paying them as he promised, had informed the military mandarin, whereupon the latter seized Mo and his man, and threw them into prison. As neither of them would give the name and number of their boat, or say to what place they belonged, the mandarin directed them to be beaten, and condemned the principal, Mo, to wear the cangue until such time as he should confess his crime, when probably his boat would be seized, his wife sold, and himself strangled. Mrs. Mo, or rather Jow, was very pretty, and she knew it; so did her husband, who had great difficulty in obtaining a _crew_ who did not want to make love to her. Now, he thought he had found the very man, so, devil or no devil, he made up his mind to ship Jerry as second mate and crew combined. He told his wife what he had determined, and as Jow saw that the devil was not quite as ugly as he had been painted to her, she reluctantly gave her consent, the truth being she had determined never to speak well of the crew in future. Mo shaved Thompson's head, face, and eyebrows, then attached the artificial queue they had brought from the ya-mun, and sent him on deck for his wife's inspection. "What do you think of him?" "Ugly beast! frightful! he makes me tremble!" cried Jow in an affected voice, while secretly she thought she had never seen such a handsome crew in her life. Mo treated him very kindly and passed him off as a dumb man from Kwantung, and Jerry began to like the life immensely. Jow was, as her name suggested, a soft fascinating woman, and whenever her husband was away would, when addressing the crew, relax her severe expression of countenance, and before he had been shipped a week, they were desperately in love with each other. He was so handsome, so daring, so kind, and so a hundred other things, while poor Mo, who was an excellent fellow as Chinese husbands go, was (behind his back) so stupid, so cowardly, so ugly, so in-every-way-mean. Women are clever in finding excuses even for their little peccadilloes, and Jow was as smart as the rest of her charming sex. Being a Chinese woman, this little weakness must be forgiven her, remembering she was almost sold to one, who, like all his countrymen, consider women to be mere animals created to minister to the wants of men; therefore, when she found a being who treated her kindly, waited on her, showed he considered her his equal, ay and in many things his superior, she sinned according to our ideas, but really unconsciously avenged the wrongs of her sex; and Mr. Mo being the victim, let those be sorry for him who have no better opinion of women than he had.