About a fortnight before the race-meeting the number of corpses that floated down the river became burdensome. Many of the men and officers in the merchant ships lying in the stream were attacked with typhoid, and from all accounts there was a severe epidemic raging in Whang Chai, a town some six miles higher up the river. Something had to be done, as the matter was becoming serious, and Shelford, from his intimate knowledge of the language and ideas of thought of the natives, was despatched in a steam launch to Whang Chai to discover the state of affairs, and if possible to suggest some means of arresting the ravages of the disease. Shelford arrived at the highly insanitary little town, and without further delay interviewed the head official, one To Phat, an indolent and superstitious civil mandarin. The chief military officer, a man with Western ideas and well educated, was at the time absent from Whang Chai. Shelford found the people dying by hundreds in the dirty little town, and as far as he could see there was every prospect of their continuing to do so until they appreciated the fact that drinking-water need not necessarily be drawn from the main sewers. To Phat, comfortably seated in his yamen, admitted the fact of the enormous death-rate then registered in Whang Chai, but to all Shelford’s suggestions of its cause or prevention he turned the deaf ear of pompous ignorance. He—To Phat—could put his finger at once on the cause of the dreadful mortality. The disease was perfectly natural and only to be expected; in fact, the whole matter had been satisfactorily explained to him by a certain Ching. Ching was therefore sent for that he might explain to the dull-witted foreign devil why this fatal epidemic harassed the peace-loving citizens of Whang Chai. Shelford at once recognised in Ching the typical bully of a yamen runner, the promoter of disturbances, the paid spy and informer. However, Shelford listened with polite attention to the lying scoundrel. Ching explained that, although perhaps unknown to the honourable stranger, still it was a matter of universal knowledge in Whang Chai that the gentle slope on which the town had the felicity to be built was occupied by a dragon. This benign animal had for centuries caused innumerable blessings to fall on the happy inhabitants, but that recently certain grave indignities had been offered him. Firstly, foreigners, preachers of strange doctrines, had built a house on the dragon’s head: this had resulted in the loss of several vessels trading from Whang Chai; but the crowning insult had been the building of a school-house on their benefactor’s stomach. This final indignity had been visited on the erring town by pestilence, and what the end would be no one could foresee.