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see a room, and the clerk called one of the floor boys on the telephone while I went to the lift. The liftman lounged inside against the mirror reading a Chinese newspaper. He folded the newspaper, crashed the gate shut, yanked on the rope, and we rumbled upward, our passage punctuated at each landing by a loud metallic clank. On the third and topmost landing, where I alighted, a miniature radio on the floor boy’s desk was emitting the falsetto screeches of Cantonese opera. The floor boy, a smiling fresh-faced youth of about twenty, dressed in a white jacket, wide-legged cotton trousers, and felt slippers, led me down the corridor and unlocked the door of the end room.
    â€œVery pretty room, sir,” he grinned.
    It was not pretty, but it was clean and perfectly adequate, with a wide hard bed, a cheap dressing table and wardrobe, and the inevitable enamel spittoon on the floor. There was also a telephone and a padded basket for a teapot: I remembered hearing that in Chinese hotels a constant supply of green tea was provided free of charge. I could almost live on tea; it would be a great saving.
    â€œAnd a pretty view, sir.”
    He opened the doors onto the balcony, which was roofed over but beautifully light: a perfect studio. And the view was indeed superb, for the balcony was on a corner and commanded an immense panorama. On one side it looked out over the roof tops of Wanchai, behind which rose the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and the Peak, while in front was the harbor scattered with ships of every shape and size: cargo boats, liners, warships, ferryboats, tramps, junks, sampans, walla-wallas, and numberless comic, graceless, rusting mongrels—some lying at anchor, some in ponderous movement, some bustling about busily, crisscrossing the harbor with their wakes. And across the harbor, so close that I could count the windows of the Peninsula Hotel, was the water front of Kowloon, with a backdrop of tall bare hills stretching away into China.
    I said, “This’ll do fine.”
    â€œMy name is Tong Kwok-tai, sir,” the floor boy grinned deferentially. “Will you please correct my bad English?”
    â€œThere’s nothing to correct, Ah Tong.”
    â€œYou are too kind, sir.” And as we turned back into the room he said, “You have a girl here, sir?”
    â€œA girl? No.”
    I supposed that by “here” he meant Hong Kong and still did not realize. I went down again in the rumbling lift, and paid the clerk a deposit to make sure of the room. He wrote out a receipt in Chinese. I could hear the muffled sound of dance music coming from a swing door leading off the hall. I nodded to the door, asking the clerk, “What’s in there?”
    â€œBar.”
    â€œGood, I’ll have a beer.”
    I turned away across the hall, and just then the door swung open and a Royal Navy matelot came out. He was small, wiry, and darkly tanned by the sun. He wore a hat with H.M.S.
Pallas
in gold letters round the brim.
    He cocked his head at me in casual salutation.
    â€œGood Lord, the Navy!” I laughed. “The last thing I expected to meet here!”
    He gave me an odd look like the clerk. “Well, you won’t meet much else here, mate,” he said. “Not at the Nam Kok.”
    â€œNo? You mean there aren’t any Chinese here?”
    â€œOnly the girls,” he said. “The girls are all Chinese.”
    The door swung open again at this moment and a Chinese girl came scurrying out, laughing and saying to the matelot, “Hey, you left me.” She wore high heels and a cheongsam with tall collar and split skirt. She was very pretty.
    â€œAnd they’re a decent lot, too, if you treat them proper,” the matelot said proprietorially. “Eh, Nelly? Isn’t that right?”
    â€œSure, we’re plenty nice,” the girl acceded cheerfully, tugging at his hand. “Come on, you talk too much. You make me