“That is the deuce of my business, Captain,” easily returned Charley Tong Sin. “Trouble with your crew? Can I help you? Do you need men? I am sorry you didn’t come to me in the first place.” “I wish I had. ’Twas old Paddy Blake I first turned to as one Irishman to another. And maybe I was wrong in not asking your advice about the steamer.” If this were a fencing-match, then O’Shea had scored the first point. His bold, ingenuous features expressed not the slightest change of emotion, but in an instant he had discovered that which clinched and drove home his suspicions of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador put a fresh cigarette to his lips and held a lighted match between his fingers, unaware that the flare conveyed a fleeting translucence. Underneath the beautifully polished nails of his thumb and forefinger there showed a line of vermilion which the most careful scrubbing had failed to eradicate. It was the color of the paint which had been smeared on the stern of the _Whang Ho_ in the form of a sprawling Chinese character. The luck of Captain Michael O’Shea so ordered it that he should observe this phenomenon before the flare of the match died out. Thereupon he lied swiftly and plausibly, the purpose hot in his heart to find a pretext that should coax the comprador to accompany him on board the _Whang Ho_. To a sympathetic query Captain O’Shea smoothly made answer: “I am the kind of a man that will own up to his own mistakes. I thought I could go it alone when I ought to have been glad and thankful for the help of a man like yourself. Between us, I am not anxious to go to sea in this old tub that I have chartered from the China Navigation Company. And now that I am delayed for lack of a crew, maybe you can show me a way to slip out of the bargain. My chief engineer finds the vessel is not at all what she was represented to be. I took her subject to certain conditions and she cannot make good.” “I told you you would be stung in Shanghai without me,” laughed Charley Tong Sin in the greatest good-humor. “Better chuck up the _Whang Ho_ and let me find you a steamer.” “That I will do, and gladly,” affirmed O’Shea. “Have ye time to step aboard with me now and I will show you how I have been buncoed. Then ye can advise me how to break the charter. I have a good case.” “Of course I will,” cried the comprador. “Pooh, we will bluff the China Navigation Company out of its boots. I will make them look like thirty cents.” “You are the smartest comprador between Tientsin and Singapore, according to Paddy Blake, and I have no doubt of it,” sweetly murmured Captain O’Shea. “That’s what everybody says,” affably rejoined Charley Tong Sin as they walked into the street. “What is the trouble with your crew?” “You can search me. I cannot find out for the life of me. They up and jumped ship without warning.” “I will get more men for you. Leave it to me. You have come to the right place this time, Captain O’Shea.”