"Yes, sir, Cappen" The little old Chinaman looked up from the brass threshold that he was polishing. Kneeling at the entrance to the forward cabin, with his back toward Captain Sheldon, he peered round his shoulder with a gnome-like movement, his hands pausing on the brass. Captain Sheldon laid down his book. He pointed an accusing forefinger at the stateroom threshold, which the steward had just finished. "That’s dirty, Wang. You haven’t half polished it. What’s the matter with you lately?" "All light, Cappen, all light. Eye gettee old" He shifted his pan of brick-dust, scuttled across on his knees to the stateroom threshold, and attacked the brass again. With head bent low and hands flying, he worked silently. His back disclosed nothing beyond the familiar mechanical impersonality. Captain Sheldon watched him with narrowing eyes. He realized that he was beginning to "get down on" the old steward; yet to his mind there was justice in the feeling. Wang wasn’t so neat or careful as he used to be. He frowned as he noted the greasy collar of the Chinaman’s tunic. A dirty steward!—he had always abhorred the notion. To his strict ideas of nautical propriety, it meant the beginning of a ship’s disintegration. The time was not far distant, he saw clearly, when he would have to get rid of old Wang. He had inherited the steward along with the ship _Retriever_ when his father died. "Wang-ti, His Mark" the entry had stood voyage after voyage on the ship’s articles; young John Sheldon had grown up taking the venerable Chinaman for granted. He was the "old man’s" trusted servant, as much a part of the vessel as her compass or her keel. He took entire charge of the ship’s provisioning, as well as of the cabin accessories. He kept the commissary accounts, with never a penny out of the way; his prudence and honesty had saved the ship many a dollar. John often used to hear his father boast that be wouldn’t be able to go to sea without Wang-ti. In his boyhood on shipboard, there had existed a natural intimacy between the captain’s son and the factotum of the nautical household. John’s mother was dead, he roamed the ship wild from forecastle to lazaret; and Wang had guarded his fortunes with the wise faithfulness that knows how to keep its attentions unobserved. The captain had even permitted his son to sit in the steward’s room, watching him smoke a temperate pipeful of opium after the noon dishes were done; this was the measure of his trust in the old Chinaman.