8G 
RECKLESS SAILING* 
to prevent its being landed. Reckless men, with armed 
followers and fast vessels, stepped forward, and engaged 
to laud the poison under the very bows of the war-junks 
and to bring back silver in return. Their vessels were 
armed as well as their followers; they received high 
Avages, and threw away their money in riot and dissipa- 
tion. If necessary, they went through blood : the opium 
mimt he landed at every risk; the lives of a few dozen 
Impeinal sailors were nothing. While at sea, they kept 
clear heads, and devoted their entire attention to the one 
great thing of making a quick passage. Masts and sails 
were nothing to them: time was all they looked to. 
They gloried in heavy weather Avhen it urged them 
ahead, and became fretful and desperate -when it threw 
them back. It wanted reckless men to lead such a 
reckless life. “Prudence is the better part of valour” 
wouldn’t have applied to them. 
Our little schooner was a source of wonder and sur- 
prise to both the foreign and native population of Singa- 
pore. The former pulled around her in their light sam- 
pans, admired her beauty, and complimented us upon 
our reckless hardihood in trusting our lives to such 
an atom for a cruise around the world; the latter com- 
pared her to a large phrau, and accused us of having 
stolen the lines of that peculiar vessel before building 
her. Both parties laughed at the idea of her weathering 
a typhoon : they knew not how much it took to smother 
a New-York pilot-boat when she lies-to under a close- 
reefed foresail. 
Let me again tuni to my journal: — 
“A singular worm is to be seen on the surface of this 
