minute, as representatives of the different large
firms whose flags they carried, and whose letters
with the very latest commercial news were to
be carried by the Queen. Each great house,
scorning the small formality of the post-office,
has its own bags of mails, and often gets its
news before other men's letters are sorted.
These large firms look with no friendly eye on
the equal blessings of a regular mail. When
information as to the opium market, the one
great piece of news in China, which everybody
asks about and which everybody knows about,
and which is what everybody means by
"information," —when " information" was only got
by irregular means along the coast, and very often
only by the opium clippers of the great houses,
a very handsome trade in buying and selling
was accomplished even by the mildest man of
business. A regular mail communication upsets
all that little arrangement, unless the great
houses can command a rate of speed in their
own ships that will outstrip the mail. Otherwise,
all the merchants have an equal chance, and huge
fortunes are not so easily made in China now-a-
days as of yore.

At length we were off. The river Min runs
deep and rapid, between fertile fields and wooded
hills, to the bar at its mouth, shallow and
formidable, extending a long distance and right
in the way of the entrance. The difficulty of
following the channel across the bar, is
aggravated by its being some distance from the land
forming the entrance of the river, and
consequently by the " marks," when it is at all thick
weather, being invisible. Here we steamed by
a poor bilged vessel, once a noble clipper, that
they were trying to get up to the anchorage
under jury canvas. She was the famous
American clipper Flying Fish, that once sailed a
race round the world with two other vessels (as
Maury tells us), and now, leaving Foo chow foo
with a splendid full freight of tea, had ended
her career as a clipper at this miserable bar.
She had come down the river safely, and was
working out of the narrow channel, when she did
what she had never done before—"missed stays;"
there was no room to " wear," so to let go the
anchor was her only chance. Here again, a strange
accident occurred, as fatal as unexpected. The
"shank painter," a chain securing the "flukes" of
the anchor to the rail, jammed its end in rendering,
as the weight of the anchor made it fly round
the timber heads. So there the anchor hung;
chain being used instead of rope, no one could
cut it; and the good ship drifting round took the
ground on the bar and drove ashore.

The little Queen, being a steamer, was not
subject to a casualty of this kind, and the bright
sunshine gleaming on the White Dogs Islands on
our left, and the high land about Hai tan on
our right, led us to  hope, as we rapidly cleared
the dangers of the bar, for a quick and easy
run. With a fine fair breeze, as we had now,
the open sea route is preferred to the inshore
route; and, crowding every stitch of sail on the
ship, we hurried on.

One of the peculiarities of navigation on the
coast of China, particularly at certain seasons of
the year, is rapid change of weather. The sea
is as sudden in its changes as the winds:
probably from the strong currents prevalent: and
it does not take long to transform the short
chopping sea incidental to a " fresh breeze,"
into deep wall-like waves, quick running and
merciless. So, the better the weather, the
more careful the good sailor, and the more it
behoves him to pay attention to that safe and
sure guide—his barometer. In all well regulated
ships the barometer is noted at sea or in
harbour at the end of every four hours; but it
sometimes happens that in the confusion and
bustle of a last day in port—cargo, mails,
baggage, stores, and sundries, all coming in at once—
the careful reading of the barometer may have
been overlooked.

Hardly were we well clear of the entrance of
the Min, our ropes coiled down, and the crew
piped to dinner, when we became aware on board
our little ship that the barometer was very low
indeed. It was of little use to inquire, now, when
it had begun to go down; low down there it was;
and notwithstanding the bright blue sky overhead,
and the merrily dancing sea, we knew well what we
had to look for. The distance between Foo chow
foo and Hong kong is not much more than four
hundred miles, and Amoy is not quite half way
between them. Our object would be to gain
Arnoy before the typhoon—if there were one
coming—broke in its violence, for there the
harbour is quite sheltered, and we could wait
quietly the blowing over of the storm. It was
not far to go for a steamer with a fair wind;
but if the storm came on, as it probably would,
within twelve hours, we should have a race for it.
Of course we could fall back on the alternative,
in any weather, of bringing our little ship to the
wind, and " lying to" until the gale was over.
Our first chance was to run for it; and we had
not run long, before, as the evening drew in,
the prediction of the barometer was verified.
The bright blue sky disappeared. Black lurid
clouds massed up to the eastward, and the
veering and strengthening breeze moaned and
whistled through our rigging. The sea, not
bright and sparkling, but black and sullen,
chased our stern no longer as in sport, but with
a rushing subdued roar, that boded mischief.
The fishing boats, of which there is generally a
large fleet upon all parts of the coast, were all
standing in for the land, towards the various
villages. We ourselves were making every
preparation for what sailors call a " dirty night,"
when our attention was called by the look-out
man to a white patch on the horizon. At first we
took it for some small craft, but the sail was too
white to belong to one of the fishing-boats, as
they all use matting for sail-cloth. The shape
of it, too, was unlike any of the strangely-shaped
"rigs" that the Chinese coast boats have. It
looked like the topsail of a ship close reefed;
but how it could be in that position, just showing
above the water, was a mystery.

The order was given on board to " keep
away a point or two, to steer for the sail,"