CHAPTER XII
THE BLACK JOSS
BUT before the Kyoto Maru had well begun her voyage across the Pacific, the Delphian was nearly at the end of hers. Around her the blue water had changed by degrees to a muddy, brownish waste, and the first gleam of China showed one long yellow strip on the horizon. Mark and Alan, standing eagerly at the rail, were vaguely disappointed. The land, even when the ship had plowed miles closer to it, seemed dreary and uninteresting, with stretching marsh and dull trees. Far stranger and more foreign to them were the countless boats which the Delphian now began to pass ungainly fishing-vessels, brown-sailed salt-junks from up-river, and little, flitting sampans. The lightship that marks the mouth of the Yangtze was long past, and presently "Woosung, where the Delphian was to dock, loomed
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