Instead, shortly before noon, the steamship company dispatched two launches to the ship to take the passengers ashore.
When they said their goodbyes outside the restaurant, Li asked Hsin-mei if he had any friends at the steamship company to help buy the tickets.
The other, Ting Na-sheng, whose foreign name was not Tennyson, the poet, but Nelson, the admiral, worked in a British steamship company.
