The evening was at once heartsome and subdued. On the deck of a Nippon the dear, drunken devils of yellow seamen were making soft music on Chinese guitars. A steady frost had settled and, with complete darkness, the usually lowering streets of the Asiatic quarter seemed strangely wide and frank. A fat-faced moon was slowly rising. The waters were swift and limpid, sprinkled with timid stars, and seemed to promise a very blessed time to the weary. On the corner by the dock gates the Blue Lantern shone sharp, like a cut gem. He lounged over the side of the bridge, and, so still was the night, he could almost hear a goods train shunt. It was still enough to bring from a narrow street, flanked by two tremendous walls, a curious sound of _sup-sup, sup-sup_. Perce Sleep heard it. “Bloody Chinks!” he growled. The next moment the _sup-sup_ came from behind him, and a hand fell on his shoulder. A yellow face peered at him. It was old, flabby, steamy. “’Ullo, li’l Perce!” The words came so musically that one would have said they were sung. “’Ullo, Chopstick. Gointer buy us a beer?” “Les. Co’long Shaik Yip. Have plelty beer.” “Aw right. Look ’ere, Chinky, I’m in a mess. You’re all right for the ready, everyone says. Got a pot o’ the dibs, I reckon. Now look ’ere ... would you.... I mean ... will yeh be a sport, and——” “Ao.” Shaik Yip smiled a meaningless Oriental smile. “Perce want money. Ao. Perce and Shaik Yip talk business. Co’long. Co’long.” And they entered the Blue Lantern and ordered two Gypsy’s Warnings and some of the Nearer-my-God-to-Thee sandwiches. * * * * * The Sleep _ménage_ was not such as one would turn to happily, when weary, for repose. Perce lived with his stepfather, a paralytic, and the old man’s daughter, a “softie.” The old man, a mass of helpless flesh, lived in a chair by the fireside. He had been a stevedore in his time, and his great shaggy head, his rolling shoulders, and the long, thick arms, all now as white and motionless as death, told a tale of superb strength in youth. There he sat now, and there he was fed and tended and washed. The only life that had been left him was his voice, and of this there only remained a thin piping, so that he was known locally as Old Joe, after that Fleet Street notability who, every morning at ten-thirty in the Fourth Edition, gives the world his famous treble. His daughter, a slip of a girl, was the mother of the house. Her face had that arresting beauty sometimes seen in the faces of the vacant-minded. There was nothing of the idiot about her, save in her talk and her simple character. She managed the house, and she managed Old Joe, and she strove hard to manage the waster, Perce. “Wis’ful,” someone had said. “Wis’ful—that’s ’ow she looks. Like as if she was wanting to catch ’old of something that ain’t there.” As for Perce, he only ate and drank and slept at the house, and had little to do with Fanny, save to borrow coppers from her.