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in about four in the afternoon.

Still they kept loading rice. The rice famine in Honan makes the Wuhu rice extra important, and the captain told us that he had never had such a delay here before.

Still we waited. The captain said he hoped to get to Nanking by ten that night. And we had to get on shore, take an hour's trip in a carriage, pack quite a bit of stuff, ride back again, and get the eight o'clock train to Peking next morning.

At eight o'clock in the evening, after a day of pleasant idleness which exasperated me nearly to the limit, though I did get in some good reading and made a few sketches of the shore and junks, we got under weigh. I went up on deck until the moon went down then went below to sleep until eleven. At elev-thirty we began the battle to get off. We had our pieces of hand baggae taken below, distributing our five persons at strategic points to see it all got to the same place without mishap. Having to plow through a tightly packed mass of Chinese deck passengers with thirteen pieces of small baggage, at night, is a job. Fortunately we seem to have tipped the salon boys more than the other passengers did, so they stuck pretty close to us and did valiant service. By twelve we were weary but together. The ship swung around and came to anchor and the wharf coolies were on board grabbing baggage. Fortunately we had all our stuff under hand or eye, and managed to keep it there until we had struck a bargain. Two likely looking chaps agreed to do the whole job of getting our thriteen pieces of hand baggae and three trunks on shore for four dollars. We bargained until the first sampan load had hone off, but to no avail. We agreed to four dollars, and when the [[strikethrough]] xxxxxxxxxxxxx [[/strikethrough]] sampan came back our stuff was piled up so that it could in first. The worst of the crowd had gone off in the first boat, but there was still plenty. 

The girls got down into the boat to watch the stuff get in, and I filled the passageway while the goods were passed down. Some Chinese and other foreign passengers followed us down, and just as we were about to cast off one of the ship's officers came down to inform our sampan man that one man