Steamers flying the flags of many nations were anchored in the Woosung River off the water-front of Shanghai. High-pooped junks tacked past them and cargo lighters manned by half-naked coolies drifted with the muddy tide. In a handsome, solidly fashioned perspective extended the European quarter of the city, as unlike the real China as London or New York. Turbanned Sikh policemen, tall and dignified, in soldierly khaki and puttees, strolled through the clean, well-paved streets. English, French, and German merchants clad in white were spun around corners in ’rickshaws pulled by sweating natives muscled like race-horses. Tourists lounged on the piazzas of the Astor House or explored the shops filled with things rare and curious. Unseen and unperceived was the native city of Shanghai, incredibly filthy and overcrowded, containing a half-million souls within its lantern-hung streets and paper-walled tenements. Near the river, at the end of the English quarter farthest removed from the parks and pretentious hotels, was a row of small, shabby brick buildings which might have belonged in Wapping or the Ratcliff Road. There was nothing picturesquely foreign about them or their environment. Two or three were sailors’ lodging-houses, and another was the tumultuous tavern ruled over by Paddy Blake. Here seafarers swore in many tongues and got drunk each in his own fashion, but Paddy Blake treated them all alike. When their wages were gone he threw them out or bundled them off to ships that needed men, and took his blood-money like the thorough-going crimp that he was. On this night the place was well filled. A versatile cabin steward off a Pacific liner was lustily thumping the battered tin pan of a piano. Six couples of hairy seamen, British and Norwegian, were waltzing with so much earnestness that the floor was cleared as by a hurricane. Cards and dice engaged the attention of several groups seated about the tables by the wall. In blurred outline, as discerned through the fog of tobacco smoke, a score of patrons lined the bar and bought bad rum with good coin. For the moment peace reigned and never a fist was raised. Captain Michael O’Shea sauntered in during this calm between storms. The dingy room and its sordid amusements had a familiar aspect. It was precisely like the resorts of other seaports as he had known them during his wild young years before the mast. The bar-tender was a pasty-faced youth who replied to O’Shea’s interrogation concerning Paddy Blake: “The old man has stepped out for a couple of hours. He had a bit of business aboard a vessel in the stream. Will you wait for him? If you’re lookin’ for able seamen he can find ’em for you.” “I have no doubt of it,” said O’Shea, “and he will bring them aboard feet first. Fetch me a bottle of ginger-ale to the table in the corner yonder and I will wait awhile.”