My pipe fell to the floor again, and I roused up, realizing only that I had been half asleep, but also feeling the desire to fill in the hiatus--to place in the vacant foreground the scientific apparatus vaguely described by my friend. So, after a few preliminary outlinings in charcoal, I went at it, and soon I had placed the tanks and spiral pipes and the long, cup-shaped object described to me. Vaguely, as I worked, I felt that I was merely obeying suggestion--following up the hints given me by my neighbor; yet, when I had finished, and seated myself for another smoke, I felt myself trembling from head to foot, as though I had actually lived the experience, and were suffering from the memories. From this state of mind I was aroused by the return of my neighbor. "By George!" he said, as he looked at the painting. "Where do you get this? You have got it right, and refreshened my memory. Fifty years is a long time, and I had forgotten; but there is the whole apparatus, lacking only the Reverend Mr. Mayhew. Why didn't you put him in, behind that big, long cup?" "Don't know," I answered. "Didn't think of him." "Well, never mind. There is a reason for all things. No doubt you will yet get it all, if you delve farther into the infinite." But I did not need to delve still farther, as will be apparent by what follows. "There is not much to the yarn," he continued. "The trouble began in the usual way, from the white man's fixed idea that it is always safe to kick a nigger, and that a nigger is anything human, but not white. A good deal depends, of course, upon the kind of nigger that is kicked, and big Pango Sam was not accustomed to it. Neither were Wong Fing nor Landy Jim, but they all got it before we were well through the Straits of Sunda. All three threatened the second mate, who was doing the kicking, with sudden death, and the result was that we were all called aft and compelled, under the muzzle of three pistols, to hand in our sheath knives. "I needed no such coercion, for, though I was a 'foremast hand, I had no great sympathy for, nor community of interest with, my shipmates. However, the skipper and two mates classed me in with the rest, and had as little sympathy for me. In fact, the only companionship I enjoyed on that passage was when I was at the wheel, and the passenger would talk with me. He was about my age, and seemed to have taken a liking to me; yet there was little that we could talk about. I was uneducated and crude, while his was the brightest mind I had come into contact with. "Even then I could appreciate that he knew more of navigation than did the skipper, and I heard him say one day that the mistake of his life was in taking to the ministry instead of devoting himself to science. For preaching came hard to him, he said, while the study of science was a delight.