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namely, from towards the end of 1855 to about the middle of 1856—he had been out of Government employment;—seduced it seems, by the large profits and exciting adventure of a life on board of the armed steamer "Eaglet," the common property of himself and Mah Chow Wong. It was not long, however, before the embarrassment of his own affairs, and the flight from Singapore of his brother Henry—the defaulter and fraudulent trustee, from whom his capital is supposed to have been derived—compelled him to sell his interest in the "Eaglet" and return into the Government service.
But, amid all these vicissitudes, and at every stage of his career, the "connection" with Mah Chow Wong, and the gang or clan of that miscreant, was maintained unrelaxed. It may have been, as the Superintendent of Police,[1] in his evidence alleges it, the bond of friendship; or even—if an older resident, and a senior officer in the public service, the marine magistrate and governor of the gaol,[2] is to be credited —that of affinity, through a woman named Awoong, by concubinage and adoption, according to Chinese law and usage, which cemented that "connection." But it was at least sufficiently well-founded, on the basis of a common interest, to need none of those supports from the affections.
The Governor's own Commissioners of Enquiry have not been able to ignore the fact. There can be no doubt, they say, that the "connection" has existed; that it has been "long and intimate;" and that it has ripened into, at least, one "partnership in
