The wall of the room was broken by a small alcove which made a nook a little apart from the playful mariners. Here O’Shea smoked his pipe and sipped his glass and was diverted by the noisy talk of ships and ports. At a small table near by sat a man, also alone, who appeared to be in a most melancholy frame of mind. Discouragement was written on his stolid, reddened face, in the wrinkles of the worn gray tweed clothes, in the battered shape of the slouch hat. O’Shea surmised that he was a beach-comber who had seen better days, and surveyed him with some curiosity, for the man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his lip quivered, and once he was unable to suppress an audible sob. To find a sturdily built man of middle-age weeping alone in a corner of a sailor’s grog-shop led one to conclude that alcohol had made him maudlin. But he did not look intoxicated, although dissipation had left its marks on him. O’Shea conjectured that he might be suffering the aftermath of a spree which had broken his nerves and left him weak and womanish. In such a pitiable plight, the contemplation of his own woes had moved him to tears. Tactfully waiting until the man had recovered his self-control, O’Shea nodded with a cordial smile and indicated a chair at his own table. The stranger shifted his place with a certain eagerness, as if he were anxious to be rid of his own miserable company. His tremulous hands and the twitching muscles of his face prompted O’Shea to say: “Will you have something with me? I dislike sitting by meself.” “A small drink of brandy, if you please. I am trying to taper off. God knows I welcome the chance to talk to somebody that is clean and sober.” The man’s heavy, morose eyes regarded the shipmaster approvingly. Presently he began to talk with fluent coherence, in a kind of headlong manner. He felt that he had found a kindly listener and seemed afraid that O’Shea might desert him before the tale was done. “I am on the beach and all to pieces again, as you may have guessed,” said he. “My name is McDougal, late of the American Trading Company, but I couldn’t hold the job. This time I went to smash in Tientsin. It was queer how it happened. I had been sober and making good for nearly six months. Ever see a Chinese execution? Well, this was an extraordinary affair. A high official of the province had been condemned for treason, and the government decided to make a spectacle of him as a sort of public warning. The place was the big yard of the governor’s yamen. I joined the crowd that looked on. First came a covered cart with black curtains. A strapping big Manchu crawled out of it. He was the executioner, and a dingy apron covered with dark-red blotches hung from his chin to his toes.