I'm going to keep my eye open and not be put asleep by his quiet
ways--and I'd advise you to do the same."
"Trust me," said Harman, "and more especial when we come to longsides
with the _Yan-Shan_."
Now the _Yan-Shan_ had started in life somewhere early in the nineties
as a twelve hundred ton cargo boat in the Bullmer line; she had been
christened the _Robert Bullmer_, and her first act when the dog-shores
had been knocked away was a bull charge down the launching slip,
resulting in the bursting of a hawser, the washing over of a boat and
the drowning of two innocent spectators; her next was an attempt to
butt the Eddystone over in a fog, and, being unbreakable, she might
have succeeded only that she was going dead slow. She drifted out of
the Bullmer line on the wash of a law-suit owing to the ramming by her
of a Cape boat in Las Palmas harbour; engaged herself in the fruit
trade in the service of the Corona Capuella Syndicate, and got on to
the Swimmer rocks with a cargo of Jamaica oranges, a broken screw shaft
and a blown-off cylinder cover. The ruined cargo, salvage and tow
smashed the Syndicate, and the _Robert Bullmer_ found new occupations
till the See-Yup-See Company of Canton picked her up, and,
rechristening, used her for conveying coffins and coolies to the
American seaboard.
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