Tell them capen give dollar, eh ?" "Yes, tell them that." "You likee other boat and men ?" "Well, I don't know," said Mr Brooke, hesitating, as if he thought some use might be made of such a fast-sailing craft.
"Ching askee." He entered into a short conversation with the boatmen, who smiled at first, then scowled, stamped, and gesticulated.
Ching nodded and turned to us.
"Say, go to big steamy-ship and Queen Victolia jolly sailor, but no to see pilate.

'Flaid cut off head." "Then they must go; send them off." The men laughed, nodded at us in the most friendly manner, then hoisted their sail and went back up the river.

Then, provisions being served out, our lads sat eating and chatting, while our boat sped seaward towards where the two junks lay windbound not many miles away, or else waiting for some reason, one which Mr Brooke decided at last to be for reinforcements.
"Yes," he said, as I sat munching away at some pleasantly sweet-tasted bread which Ching had brought on board, "depend upon it, we shall see boats or a small junk go out and join them by and by." It is curious how old tunes bring up old scenes.

Most people say the same, but at the risk of being considered one who thinks too much of eating, I am going to say that nothing brings up old scenes to my memory more than particular kinds of food.
For instance, there is a flat, square kind of gingerbread which we boys used to know as "parliament." I cannot ever see that without thinking of going to school on sunny mornings, and stopping by one particular ditch to bang the wasps with my school-bag, swung round by its string.
It was only the seniors who sported a strap for their books; and in those days my legs, from the bottom of my drawers to the top of my white socks, were bare, and my unprotected knees in a state of chip, scale, and scar, from many tumbles on the gravelly path.
Then, again, pancakes will bring up going round the stables and cowhouse in search of stray new-laid white eggs, which I bore off, greatly to the disgust of the great black cock, with the yellow saddle-hackles and the tall red serrated comb.
Fish naturally bring up the carp in the muddy pond which we used to catch, and gloat over their golden glories; or the brazen small-scaled tench, with all the surroundings at Norwood, where the builder has run riot, and terraces and semi-detached villas--I hope well drained--cover the pool whence we used to drag forth miniature alligators with a worm.
I could go on for pages about those recollections, but one more will suffice:--Sweet cakey bread always brings up Mother Crissell, who must have made a nice little independence by selling us boys that sweet cake dotted with currants, some of which were swollen out to an enormous size, and lay in little pits on the top.

These currants we used to dig out as _bonnes bouches_ from the dark soft brown, but only to find them transformed into little bubbles of cindery lava, which crunched between the teeth.
And so it was that, as I sat sailing along at the mouth of that swift, yellow, muddy Chinese river, munching the sweet cakey bread Ching had brought on board, and gazing from time to time at the geese we had shot and had no means of cooking, memory carried me back to Mother Crissell's shop, and that rather bun-faced old lady, who always wore a blue cotton gown covered with blue spots and of no particular shape, for the amiable old woman never seemed to have any waist.