"Then Keelung is in the hands of the French?"
"Yes. That is if by Keelung you mean a strip of a few hundred feet wide around the harbour. But the hills all around that again are occupied by the Chinese."
"Little difference that will make," said Carteret. "The Celestials have had all they want. At the first sign of a French advance they'll run, and never stop running till they reach Taipeh."
"I'm not so sure about that," replied Gardenier, a trifle coldly. "In the first place, the French have no land forces with which to make an advance. In the second place, the Chinese are better fighters than you give them credit for, Mr. Carteret. All they need is a good leader, and I believe that they have such a man in Liu Ming-chuan."
"And in the third place," said Beauchamp, "the Keelung climate is enough to defeat the French if there were no Chinese. By the time their transports arrive the northeast monsoon will be about due. Then the Lord help them! One of the wettest spots on earth. Boville, what is the annual rainfall over there?"
"One hundred and fifty-eight inches on the average. One year it lacked only an inch and a half of the two hundred."
"One hundred and fifty-eight inches," repeated MacAllister. "That does not convey much meaning to my mind. How does it compare with some climates we do know? That of London, for example?"
"Ashamed to say that I don't know London's rainfall," said the consul. "All I remember is that it seemed to do little else but rain there when I was a boy. Boville? ... Carteret? ... You are Londoners.... What? Do none of you know? ... Shocking ignorance!"
"I do not want to put forward my opinion on the climate of London in a company of Englishmen," said Sinclair; "but I believe the rainfall there is about twenty-five inches."
"Easy seeing that you have not lived in England," said Carteret, with the same contemptuous tone he had already used when introduced to Sinclair. "A hundred inches would be more like it."