“One night we had anchored just astern of a foreign devils’ warship, and some time after dark there was a big commotion on deck. It appeared that a man had fallen overboard, and about a minute after, our sampan gave a lurch, and a spluttering white man grabbed hold of our gunwale and tried to get on board. Mother was cooking the evening rice and fish at the time, and she made a cut at one of his hands with a big knife. She chopped off four fingers, and he gave a yell. Father jumped forward at once and gave him one blow over the head with an axe, and he sank like a stone. Two or three boats were lowered from the man-of-war. They heard the man scream, and one boat came alongside us, and an officer jumped aboard. He began talking away hard in English, and grabbed father by the queue. Of course we couldn’t understand him, but mother, who was always quick-witted, suddenly picked up the four human fingers, chucked them in the stew of rice, and stirred them up hurriedly. The officer could find no reason for suspecting us, so soon shoved off in his boat to search elsewhere for the missing man. We couldn’t afford to waste rice, so after mother had picked out the fingers we had our evening meal. Then we up anchor and started to dredge with our grapnels for the dead man. It was about slack water when father killed him, so we knew he couldn’t be far off; and some two hours after we hooked on to him and dragged him up. Then I learnt where your British sailors keep their money: in a belt of flannel they wear next their skin. We took eleven dollars from that man, besides a silver finger-ring and his clothes, and then we cast him adrift. Not a bad night, although our rice had been partly spoilt by his dirty fingers.