A few days later, one of the liners of the _Pacific Mail_ was steaming across the ocean from Yokohama towards San Francisco. On the deck sat a group of three—the same three who had foregathered on the voyage out to Nagasaki seven months before. Morton and Desjardins, finding that their chances of seeing anything of the actual fighting were not improving, had asked to be recalled, and were returning by way of New York. Bob, with sick-leave from the Japanese government, had accepted an invitation to spend a few weeks with Mr. Charteris in San Francisco. The three were lolling on their deck-chairs, when a fourth figure was seen slowly rising from the companion-way. "Well, Schwab, feel better?" shouted Morton. "Zanks, Mr. Morton, I am vat you call fairly gumfortable. Ze sea-illness attack me not zis time so bad. Indeed," he added expansively, "I gommence to enjoy myself." "Ah! de beautiful sea, de beautiful sun!" exclaimed Desjardins. "I look up into de blue sky lovly above, and it make me feel all de vorld is poetry." "Bosh!" snorted Morton in his downright way. "Excuse me; no poetry in the world but what you put there. I ain’t built that way; no Englishman who can eat a beefsteak is. No!" "But, monsieur, you do yourself, you do your nation, im-mense injustice. Par exemple! vat vas it I hear last night ven I promenade myself beneas de so silent stars? Assuredly it vas de sweet voice of Mademoiselle Charteris who give a lesson to de boy Ah-Sam. I listen; I am charmed; it vas a little poem, so short, so simple, I learn it by ’art at once: "’’Ow doss de leetle beesy bee-e Impr-rove each shinin’ hour-r, And gader ’oney all de day-e From every openin’ flower-r-r! So it begin, and—" "I see Madame Bottle!" suddenly exclaimed Schwab, rising clumsily from the deck-chair into which he had subsided. The others rose also and hastened along the deck towards a group of two ladies and a gentleman coming in their direction. Schwab at once took possession of Mrs. Pottle; the others manoeuvred for the place at Ethel’s left hand, the right being occupied by her father. Desjardins lost his chance by waiting to make an elaborate bow; Morton, for all his bluntness, was a bashful man; so that Bob had no great difficulty in securing the position. Morton consoled himself by arranging deck-chairs for the ladies, and the company grouped themselves, Schwab still next to Mrs. Pottle, and Bob retaining his place at Ethel’s left hand. "We’ve been hearing of your English lessons to Ah-Sam," said Morton to Ethel. "Have you? Oh yes! I don’t like his pidgin English at all. It would be so much nicer if he could speak properly, and the poor man is really so eager to learn." "How does he get on?" asked Bob.