I had been travelling in Manchuria, and had come down from Mukden only just in time to catch, by the skin of my teeth, the weekly steamer to Japan. The train was more than an hour late, and the drosky that I hired at the station--with my luggage piled in anyhow by the Chinese porters--had been driven by the dishevelled moujik in charge at a pace that laughed at speed limits and scorned such trifling obstacles as ruts and holes nearly a foot in depth. As we tore up to the steamer’s berth at the great wharf, that was later to prove of such inestimable value to the Japanese, the driver shouting and lashing his three horses into foam, the gangway was on the point of being lowered, and I had horrible visions of having to spend a week in that most dead of dead-alive towns, in which I already seemed to know every house. With commendable courtesy, however, the officials permitted me to get myself and effects on board, and a moment later we were steaming out into the fine harbour. The steamer was the _Mongolia_, which had the misfortune six months later to be the first Russian vessel captured by the Japanese. I was leaning over the rail, watching the hills receding from view, when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder, and on looking round was confronted by a rather sallow-faced, wiry-looking individual of medium height, with steel-grey eyes that seemed to pierce through mine clean into my brain. [Illustration: “THE DRIVER SHOUTING AND LASHING HIS THREE HORSES INTO FOAM.”] “Say, d’you speak English?” he asked me. I admitted that, being an Englishman, I had a moderate command of the language. “Well, I ain’t English, I’m Amur’can,” he replied. “So I see.” “Well, say now, how’d you know I was Amur’can?” “By your accent; one would scarcely make the mistake of taking you for anything else.” “Well, say, you’re smart enough to be an Amur’can, too, at that rate. Anyhow, I’m mighty glad to see you, for since I parted with my friend, who went to Port Arthur, I ain’t had a chance of hearin’ a language that anyone could understand. I’m out to beat the record round the world for the _New York_ ----, and if I only make it in Japan I’ll beat the previous best by exactly twelve days.” He then related to me how he had left New York and travelled _viâ_ Liverpool, London, Dover, Ostend, Berlin, Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian Railway to Dalny; and here he was, bound for Nagasaki, Japan, where he would take the train for Yokohama, and thence travel by the _Empress of India_ to Vancouver, by the Canadian Pacific Railway to Quebec, and from there back to New York.