That night over the supper table, Captain Sheldon opened a biscuit; there was a dead cockroach in it. His knife had cut it in halves. He threw the biscuit down in disgust. Wang always made the cabin bread.... Well, why didn't the old fool take it away? He must have seen the incident. Captain Sheldon knew that he was standing a few feet away in the pantry door. Taking up his plate, he snapped over his shoulder
"Steward!"
Wang was at his elbow in an instant. The captain thrust the biscuit into his trembling hand.
"Look at that! Take them all away, and bring some bread"
"Yes, sir, Cappen" The Chinaman mumbled incoherently, trying to cover his confusion. His innate sense of the etiquette of human relations, which even after fifty years of service had not accommodated itself to the brusque callousness of European manners, felt bitterly outraged; no way had been left him to save his face. Yet other and stronger emotions quickly submerged the insult. The biscuit plate rattled like a castanet as he set it down on the pantry dresser. As he cut into a new loaf of bread, he shook his head slowly from side to side, like an animal in pain, stopping in the midst of the operation to bend above the offending biscuit and examine it closely. He loosened the cockroach with the point of the bread knife; it fell to the plate, a dark spot on the white china. Under his breath he heaved a staccato sigh "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
Captain Sheldon found himself unable to forget this trivial incident; he kept brooding over it all the evening. At breakfast next morning it came to his mind again, and followed him intermittently throughout the day—a day of petty mishaps and annoyances, one of those days when everything aboard the vessel seemed to be going wrong, when even the best efforts of officers and men to please him resulted in misfortune, and the simplest words rubbed him the wrong way. Captain Sheldon was nearing the end of a long and tedious passage, with nerves and temper badly frayed.
Coming below an hour after dinner, in hope to find a little peace, he met the heavy odour of opium smoke floating through the cabin. The door into the forward cabin had been left open. He strode out angrily; the steward's door was open, too. Glancing into the stateroom, he saw the old Chinaman stretched on the bed, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling, the pipe slipping from his fingers. Thin wisps of opium smoke curled up from the bowl and drifted out into the cabin.
Captain Sheldon's patience snapped suddenly. By God, this was too much! First, bugs in the bread; and now ... the lazy old swine, lying there in an opium dream, too indolent even to close the door! The ship's discipline was going plumb to hell. His authority was becoming a joke. A dirty steward! By God, he wouldn't stand it any longer.
"Steward! Steward! Wake up, there!"
"What, Cappen?"