CHINESE JADE
217
hands
were terribly tied because a rounding up of the pirates at Bias Bay
would have involved an incursion by the British Navy into Chinese
territorial waters.
I
too went to Macao, but on business. I intended to visit the fan-tan
houses, but to my great regret I never had time. It was an experience
missed. From a business point of view also my first and second trips
were failures. The Chinese there were not very prosperous; the
Portuguese officials had very little money either, and eked out their
poor stipends by such graft as came their way. But here I came across
as fine a Britisher as one may come across in any part of the world,
and also made the acquaintance of his wife, a Spanish lady. A journey
made is never wasted if it gives one a friend.
I
met, on a later visit, the man into whose coffers flowed most of the
profits from the gaming-houses, besides the receipts brought in by the
opium monopoly for the colony. We became friends, quarreled because he
was obstinately unreasonable, became reconciled because he knew he had
been unfair to me, and was on the point of partnering me in a big
scheme of a unique kind—of which later—when a Chinese bullet put "paid"
to his account.
