"He good, my better!"
"Come see—here allee best sampan!"
Frank was confounded by the uproar, and not less so by observing that all the boatmen, and boat-women too (for there were plenty of the latter), seemed to be exactly alike, so that if he picked one, and happened to lose him, it would be no joke to find him again. As he stood hesitating, a good-looking Chinese girl hailed him from a neat little boat with a staring red eye painted on side of its bow.
"Hi! say! My namee Whampoa Sam; washee, keepee state-loom, row boat, can do all for two bob [fifty cents]. Come tly!"
Such a list of accomplishments was not to be resisted, and Austin at once took his seat under the stern awning. The young woman spread her sail, and turned the boat shoreward, steering it with an immense oar.
Away they went, past huge high-pooped junks that looked like monster rocking-chairs; past stately English steamers, beside which the little painted sampans seemed mere toys; past big clumsy rice barges, and trim gigs pulled by sturdy Western sailors. While threading her way through this maze of shipping as dexterously as any seaman, the girl found time to answer Frank's eager questions upon all that he saw, down to the staring eyes on the bow of her boat, which, as she explained, were meant to "help boatee see go straight, allee same man's eye." The mystery of her masculine name, which had puzzled Austin not a little, was also cleared up.
"My Whampoa Sam wife; Sam up Canton side now—can catchee more piecee dollar there. My row boatee till come back. Work boatee, my, allee same man. Choy! you no b'lieve? Bime-by pickaninny Sam row boatee too, muchee ploper. Look see!"
LITTLE WHAMPOA STEERS THE BOAT TO SHORE.
She pushed aside a plank, and hauled out of a box underneath it a little round-faced "four-year-old," so like a big doll that Frank almost took him for one, till he saw the child grasp the steering oar in his little pudgy hands, and actually steer the boat to shore.