As I wrote you, most of our fellow passengers are also refugees heading to the Orient with no more experience or knowledge of the place than we have. Many are families with children, who, with their natural high spirits, are treating this voyage as a great adventure. I don’t mind-in fact I find their sunniness reassuring-but not all my fellow passengers feel the same.

Aboard also are some dozen Chinese men, returning home. They look like the illustrations in that lovely poetry book; if anything, more elegant and impressive, with their pale skin and slanted eyes. The two most elderly dress in long dark gowns; all the rest wear jackets and trousers, but still, they’re quite exotic and I’ve had to be strict with Paul, that he must not stare at them.

Now, this morning, as I sat on deck with a novel from the ship’s library-it’s quite large, Mama, with books in so many languages!-I observed a young Chinese man run afoul of some boys playing with a ball. Almost knocked over by their pandemonium, he shouted that they were ill bred and worse behaved, and that as they were no credit to their families, they ought to be ashamed.

With my usual self-restraint I was on my feet in seconds. I thundered that it was he who ought to be ashamed, for frightening small children. He spun around, finger raised to scold me-then stopped, as if in confusion. Then he smiled, Mama, and bowed to me, a deep Oriental bow!

“Well,” said he. “I was under the impression that with the exception of my countrymen, the passengers on this voyage were largely German and Austrian. I suppose I shall have to watch my tongue.”

It was only then that I realized with astonishment what he’d grasped first-that we were both speaking English.

“If you intend to continue berating the children, indeed you will,” I drew myself up and answered, as though conversing in English with a Chinese aboard an Italian liner plowing the Red Sea were an everyday thing. “Perhaps you’d at least consider insulting them in your native language, so they might learn something they’ll find useful in their new home.”