He decided that he would keep the appointment to meet Charley Tong Sin at the yamen of the governor of the native city. No mischance was likely to befall him in broad daylight, and, given the opportunity, he would seek a private interview with that official. This business despatched, he proposed to show the water-front of Shanghai how speedily a river steamer could be manned and taken to sea. Having eaten breakfast early and with good appetite, Captain O’Shea went out to find a ’rickshaw. Only one of them happened to be standing in front of the hotel and he had little trouble in making the swarthy, sturdy fellow in the shafts understand where he wished to go. The coolie set off at a racing trot, whisking the vehicle along with amazing ease. The passenger had not outgrown the idea that it was rather absurd and unfair for an able-bodied person to be pulled along in this fashion by another man no stronger than himself. Therefore, he nodded approval when the coolie slackened his gait and yelled at another stalwart Chinese squatted on the curbstone who picked himself up and ran behind the ’rickshaw as “push-man,” making a double team of it. Moved by two-man power, the light vehicle made a speedy passage through the British settlement and turned into the French quarter to reach the nearest gate-way of the native city wall. Soon the order and cleanliness and modernity of European territory and dominion were left behind and the ’rickshaw had spun into the swarming, filthy streets of the immemorial China. “The River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells can be no worse than this,” said O’Shea to himself, “and for the love of heaven was there ever such a mess of people jumbled together?” No more than eight or ten feet wide, the alleys were crowded with pedlers and street-merchants selling cakes, fish, pork, vegetables, porcelain, furs, embroideries, pictures, bamboo pipes, their wares displayed on little wooden stands or spread upon the rutted flag-stones. Jostling among them were laden mules, top-heavy wheelbarrows, bawling coolies sweating beneath the burden of the shoulder-yokes, hordes of idlers, screaming children, until it was to wonder why traffic was not wholly blockaded. Into this ruck of humanity, this immense confusion and noise, the two ’rickshaw men hurled their vehicle like a projectile. They shouted incessantly, threatening and reviling, nor tried to pick a way through the press. These who got in their path were knocked head over heels. Pedlers’ barrows were upset helter-skelter. The onward course of Captain O’Shea was as destructive as a typhoon.