22 MYSTIC ISLES 



ever had such a request from a wind-jammer. She left 

 her slant to cross our path." 



Half a mile away a beautiful, living creature, all 

 quivering with the restraint, she came up into the eye 

 of the wind, and backed her fore-yard. A boat put off 

 from her, and we awaited it with indefinable alarm. 

 It was soon at the gangway we had hastily lowered, un- 

 knowing whether woman or child might not be our vis- 

 itor. It was a young Russian sailor whose hand had 

 been crushed under a block a fortnight before, and who, 

 without aid for his injury other than the simple reme- 

 dies that make up the pharmacopoeia of sailing vessels, 

 was like to die from blood-poisoning. Had our ship 

 not been met, he would undoubtedly have perished, for 

 no other steamer came to these points upon the chart, 

 and, as we were to learn, his own ship did not reach her 

 port for many weeks. He was a mere boy, his face 

 was drawn with continued pain, but, with the strong 

 repression of emotion characteristic of the sailor, he 

 uttered no sound. The passengers, relieved from silent 

 fears of any catastrophe aboard the sailing ship, and 

 perhaps salving their souls for fancied failure toward 

 the drowned Leung Kai Chu, crowded to fill the boat 

 with books, fruit, and candy, and to help the unfor- 

 tunate boy. When he had been made comfortable by 

 the surgeon, he was overwhelmed with presents. 



My vis-a-vis at table, Herr Gluck, a piano manufac- 

 turer of Munich, was a follower of Horace Fletcher, the 

 American munching missionary. Unlike the Swiss, 

 who craved raw food, Herr Gluck ate everything, but 

 each mouthful only after thorough maceration, saliva- 

 tion, and slow deglutition. At breakfast he absorbed a 



