"We've never come across any Chinks but laundrymen and mess-boys and such," said Alan. "Perhaps aristocracy is different."
"They'd be even more civilized," sighed Mark, shaking his head.
Suddenly, unbelievably to the boys, the Delphian was in tropic waters. Patches of gulf-weed floated by, just below the surface of the immense smooth swell, a swell so vast that though the ship rolled to it, eye could scarcely see the climbing crest of the next great polished roller. Flying-fish skipped and skimmed above a sea incredibly blue; the Ingrams felt that they had never before known what blue was till they faced this limitless field of living color. The sky was not very blue; it was pale and shimmering, filled with tremulous heat and bare of cloud, and at night new stars climbed above the Delphian's funnels. The nights were as hot as the days—hotter, Mark thought. Clothes were nearly intolerable; the engine-room became a place of torture, and Mark, gasping on deck after a watch, envied Alan in his lofty wireless-room.
They passed among the upper Bahamas at
