AH SAM.

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CHAPTER XLIV.

A LITTLE BIT OF CHINA.

AH SAM and I struck up a very pleasant acquaintance, and when Hung Fat came back in a few days from some village where he had gone on an errand, we often had great fun together, and I witnessed a great deal more of their behaviour, but chiefly during the absence of "Bossy."

Ah Sam was the strongest young fellow I had ever seen. said he was seventeen, and that the reason the Chinese were so He much healthier than the Weewees and the English was because they had such good nurses, teachers, and doctors. He had been a doctor's servant in China, and used to feel our pulses and tell us our weak points. The way he used to jump off the ground, and batter the soles of his shoes against the weatherboards, was merely to show what he would do if any Weewee attacked him. He knew exactly where to strike a man with his fore-finger, so as to knock all the wind out of him.

the man once.

I was

And then he had a plan for poking a fellow's eyes in with this same fore-finger. "Me no want nify," he used to say. Another part of his behaviour was to stand and hammer the wall with his bare fist, as if his hand had been made of iron instead of flesh. His great strength was his pride, and he was a fine, fierce, honest, intelligent—I was a clod beside him-friendly fellow. He was something so dif. ferent from anything I had ever seen before that I was quite fascinated by him. He had only one grief that I could discover, and that was the shortness of his finger nails. Hard work had worn them all down, and he thought it a terrible state of degradation for one of his rank to be in; but as they were still about an inch long, I could not sympathise with him as deeply as he expected.

Mr. Pot had some few acres of land, and we three used to work there, sometimes under his own superintendence. Besides this, we had to take it in turns to wait on travellers who wanted refreshment, and who were chiefly miners on their way to and from some silver mines which had been lately opened. There were also now and then gentlemen travellers, owners of property, surveyors, and men learned in rocks, metals, flowers, birds, and creeping things.

Cookee told me I had better keep myself as snug as possible, and he cut and parted my hair and dressed me out anew, so that I should not have been easily recognised.

In the evenings we three used to study English out of Hung Fat's book, while Cookee stood with his hands in his pockets, and spoke like an authority on grammar and pronunciation. He would also impart to us any new French phrase which he had lately picked up. He never kept more than one in use at a time. The new one always displaced the old one, and had to do the work of all the former ones and its own too. When it was about a week old I doubt whether anybody would have recognised it, Cookee had put so many new sounds and meanings into it. When he was out, I was tutor.

Hung Fat was the best scholar of the two. They could both read and write their own language, which made me look upon them with respect and wonder, and gave rise to a feeling of thankfulness that I had not been born in China.

H. F. had been to a Mission School in Canton, and knew who Adam and Eve were. He had also a dim perception that our Saviour was some one very great and good.

Cookee appears to have confined his religious instruction to the two important facts that Heaven is upstairs, and Hell downstairs, and so long as they didn't forget that he was satisfied.

Doubts would trouble him at times, and then the first one of the lads he met would be sure to be pounced on with the question, and be told that he was already half way down

A LESSON IN CHINESE.

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stairs, if he didn't answer it. He approached the subject mysteriously, and in a solemn whisper with me one day:

"Pomer-you'll hexcuse me-but hi considers it doo to your moral bein to hinquire has to wots hupstairs?"

As the house was only one story high, I said I didn't know that there were any stairs, which so shocked him that he opened his eyes wide upon me, shook his head hopelessly over my condition, and went out, muttering: "Down! morally hand hintylectooally, down!"

I consider the Chinese language to be worse than English; and at first I thought it was bad English. It sounded like a continual beating of pots and pans, and tumbling down of fireirons, with the occasional ding-dong of a cracked bell.

They told me that when Cookee first took them he was always scolding them for swearing, and said he would not allow bad language on his premises.

I found out that they had a few words like ours. There was dog for instance. That was the same, kau; and I have had it explained to me since, that it is because we both thought that animal says "kau, kau, kau," when it barks, instead of "bow, wow, wow," as you do, Then there was mosquito, which we called mânu, and they mân; and ngau is their word for fish-hook, just as it is with the Marianusa people. Our word for not is mua; theirs, mo or m'. They say po for cloth; we say pohé, with a few others which I have not time to tell you of, and you, I daresay, have not time to hear.

But I must tell you of one little thing which, small as it was, pleased me very much.

Teaching and schooling in any shape were a pleasure to me, because it was so much like Happy Island occupation; but what I particularly mean was this:

We were reading some sentences about God; His being good, and great, and kind, and wise; and as I read it out for them to imitate, Ah Sam looked up and said

"This good lesson. I see you heap likee. You give good sound."

He was right. I had been reading it as though I meant and felt it, as indeed I did.

It is now time to tell you of what happened to me when I left dear old Cookee's, and how I prospered further on my journey home.

CHAPTER XLV.

GOOD BYE.

"Hi'm

"Pomer," said Cookee to me one morning, when I had told him that I intended to go on again, "Pomer," said he, dead agen the sailorin' business."

"What for?" I asked, an expression which had already taken the place of why, owing to the evil communications of Ah Sam and Ah Fat.

"You see that ere chap wot come in last night? Well E tell me as 'ow them there yaller jackets hin Noomeer

"What, those men that were always shovelling earth and making roads?"

"Hand commonly hallooded to has conwix? says you. Them's them, Pomer, han' wot's more, they've been hup to their little games agen."

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'They didn't seem to have much time for games," I said, "with those soldiers looking after them."

"Hextinguished!" sighed Cookee, "Blow'd out-han goin down. When I says little games, Hi aloods. Hif it was a goin hinto the Hinn Scripshin, why, I'd mention it has ookin of it, cutting han running, hexcapin

Well, and what has that got to do with me? I'm not a conwic," said I, rather impatiently; "O do let me go, Cookee !"

B. B.

"That's wot him a workin' round to. that got to do with me? says you.

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Take time. Wot's Wy-Heverythink.

There! Now you has it full an' fair. Yer see these 'ere little games they put the big Weewees hon the kee wee-do you take me, Mounseer Pomer? Hesker voo comprenny sucker je dee?"

"No, I don't comprenny; if that is what you mean, Cookee."

"Well, hi'll tell yer. Yer might jist as soon git away hin a balloon, has try to git away aboard a wessel. What for? says you. Wy, for this 'ere, says I-Cos hanyone wot wants to leave this ere blessed place as to go and give hin 'is name han' 'av it stuck hup hin public-fishin' they calls it, for some reason best be known ter their own selves-for forty-hate 'ours. Han they're so fond of yer, that hif yer leaves without doo notice, wy--they'd-collar yer-haboard, han' bring yer back agin."

"What ever am I to do then?" said I, feeling terribly hopeless.

"That likeways his wot Hi'm a workin' round to. My hadwice to you, my little mate, but grow'd, though hedicationally a hinfant in arms, is this ere-take to the 'otel business." "How am I to begin?"

"Go slow, Pomer, take arf a turn a stern, han you'll fetch. Yer don't know my hold friend B. B., do yer? No, says you. Now Hi'm a goin' to write a note a hintrodoocin' hof you to the same-the same has me, Pomer. Hi can't say no more than that. The same has me-that's 'im, you know! You can trust B. B. has hif he wore your father. His that clear?"

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Quite," said I, "and very kind of you to think of this." "Wot's more, Hi'll do it now. There's a team a comin' from the mines to-morrow mornin' has 'll take you within the toss of a pancake of B. B.'s door. Walk in han' there you har." Cookee wrote his note with a large lead pencil on a small