“We were getting a bit tired of all this hoop-hooraying when suddenly our ancient friend turned to me and said, ‘Say, what you goin’ to do about it?’ We were both pretty surprised at hearing him speak English, but I was jolly glad to find someone could understand us. I explained that the whole thing was an accident, that the man wasn’t much hurt, and that now, as we understood each other, we might go back to the ship, as having lost our tiffin, we didn’t care to do any more shooting that day. Our genial friend smiled kindly on us, and said it would be very hard to make his poor uneducated fellow-villagers understand that the shooting had not been done on purpose. He explained that no Chinaman was such a fool as to suppose that anyone with sense would shoot at a bird flying, that a bird could by no possibility be shot unless sitting still, and that my firing into the luncheon-basket was only a pretext to kill both coolies when they least expected it. He remarked, moreover, ‘We’ve got your gun, and I guess it’s worth at least forty dollars gold, so you’d better pay up if you want to get back to your ship. We know that in time you’ll be rescued by a landing-party, but we think you’d prefer to pay up rather than spend a night or two in our flea-infested village and be laughed at by your messmates when you do return.’ I got pretty angry at this and said, ‘I wish I had a few blue-jackets and marines now, and we’d knock hell out of your old village!’ “The ancient Chinaman smiled and said, ‘In your country you have an Employers’ Liability Act by which you’d have to pay for this coolie’s injury.’ We found then that we had a man of education to deal with, so I said I’d pay within reason but that I was dead keen to get aboard, and didn’t care if I never went shooting again in China. “Then we got on to the question of money; I had two silver dollars and a ten and five dollar Hong Kong note. My Chinese friend explained that paper money was of no use to villagers, that if I handed over the lot to him he’d pay the two silver dollars to the wounded man in compensation, that later on he might manage to negotiate the paper money (for the good of the village), and that if I’d give twenty more dollars on the morrow to his representative he’d return my gun. At the same time he added that if the navigator attempted to use his gun and resist that the villagers would eat us raw. “So we had to climb down. We left the village escorted by a howling mob, and now I’ve got to pay twenty Mexican dollars to that smooth-tongued English-speaking Chinaman before I get my 12-bore back. “Ah Hing, give me another whisky-and-soda.” --------------