FTER I had bade Dr. Nikola good night in the veranda of his house I consulted my watch, and discovering that it was not yet eleven, set off for a long walk through, the city in order to consider my position. There were many things to be reckoned for and against his offer. To begin with, as a point in its favour I took into consideration the fact that I was alone in the world. My father and mother had been dead some years, and as I was their only child I had neither brother nor sister dependent upon my exertions or to mourn my loss in case anything desperate should befall me. In the second place I had been a traveller in strange lands from my youth up, and was therefore the more accustomed to hard living. What I mean will be the more readily understood when I say that I had run away from home at the age of fifteen to go to sea; had spent three years in the roughest life before the mast any man could dream of or desire; had got through another five scarcely less savage as an Australian bushman on the borders of the Great Desert; another two in a detachment of the Cape Mounted Police; I had also held a good appointment in Hong-Kong, and had drifted in and out of many other employments good, bad and indifferent. I was thirty-five years of age, had never known what it was to be really sick or sorry, and, if the information is of any use to the world, weighed 13 stone, stood close on 6 foot in my stockings, had gray eyes and dark-brown hair, and if you will not deem me conceited for saying so, had the reputation of being passably good looking.
My position at that moment, financially and otherwise, was certainly precarious in the extreme. It was true if I looked long enough I might find something to do, but on the other hand it was equally probable that I might not, as I knew to my cost there were dozens of men in Shanghai at that moment also on the look-out for employment, who would snap up anything that offered at a moment's notice. Only that morning I had been assured by a well-known merchant, upon whom I had waited in the hope of obtaining a cashiership I had learnt he had vacant in his office, that he could have filled it a hundred times over before my arrival. This being so I told myself that I had no right to neglect any opportunity which might come in my way of bettering my position. I turned Nikola's offer over dispassionately in my mind. Unfortunately a love of adventure formed an integral part of my constitution, and when a temptation such as the present offered it was difficult for me to resist it, and I must confess this particular form of adventure appealed to me with a voice of more than usual strength. What was still more to the point, Nikola was such a born leader of men that the mysterious fascination of his manner seemed to compel me to give him my co-operation whether I would or not. That the enterprise was one involving the chance of death was its most unpleasant feature; but still I told myself I had to die some time or other, while if my luck held good and I came out of it alive £20,000 would render me independent for the rest of my existence. As the thought of all this money came into my mind, the sinister form of my half-caste landlord rose before my mind's eye, and the memory of his ill-written and worse spelled account, which I should certainly receive upon the morrow, descended on me like a cold douche. Yes, my mind was made up, I would go; and having come to this decision I went home.