“Don’t look at them,” said Susan.
“Nasty little beasts,” said Nancy.
“I’d like to bat one of them,” said Roger.
“What does it matter,” said John, “if they like cutting off their own heads.”
They left the wall and set out on a broad beaten track slanting up towards the ridge that they had crossed the day before. All but two of the small boys stopped and turned back. These two, the noisiest of the lot, ran along beside the guards, jeering, shouting, pointing at the prisoners and making signs of head-chopping. Suddenly the ex-cook, without saying a word, let go the leading-rein of Titty’s donkey, grabbed the two boys, banged their heads heartily together, and was back again by the side of the donkey. The two boys, each, no doubt, blaming the hardness of the head that had bumped his own, went for each other, fell on the ground and were left fighting in the dust.
“Velly plitty countly,” said the ex-cook, placidly waving his hand. “Allee same Melica?”
“It’s lovely,” said Titty, keeping her teeth clenched together because of the jolting of the donkey.
“Giminy,” she heard Nancy say. “My spine’s coming through the top of my head.”
“You wait,” said Roger. “They haven’t trotted yet.”
And as he said it, someone shouted an order. There was no more talking for a bit. The guards were running, their rifles leaping on their backs. The donkeys were trotting, galloping, trotting again. The prisoners were hanging on with both hands, their legs, spread wide by the saddles, kicking loose in the air. The cutting off of heads hardly seemed to matter now. How soon, how soon would the donkeys slow down into a walk?
They slowed down at last and the prisoners looked at each other. All had serious faces. All were trying to find softer spots in their saddles. But nobody had fallen off. The ex-cook was again inviting Titty to admire the scenery.
Moving along the side of the ridge they could see away to the right the feathery tops of bamboo woods, glimpses of water and more forest beyond them. Far ahead they could see more water and beyond that, range upon range of blue hills.
“It’s an island,” Nancy called over her shoulder.
The ex-cook said a name in Chinese. He translated it. “Tiger island. Velly fine island.”
“That’s why the Taicoon had a tiger on his banner,” said Titty.
For some time they went on at a fast walk. The road began to bear to the left over the shoulder of the ridge and suddenly they were looking down on the river, the mouth of which they had seen the day before. There, on the further side, was that great mass of rock, with cliffs falling to the water’s edge. Further up the river the cliffs were not so high, and the great rock sloped gently down towards green fields and trees almost on the level of the water, white walls, green roofs, a tall queer-shaped tower, a flagstaff, a widening of the river where junks were lying at anchor, and, beyond all this, a glimpse of yet more water on the further side of the trees.
The ex-cook pointed.
“Dlagon Island,” he said, and dropped his voice. “Missee Lee. … Twenty-two gong Taicoon.”
“Gosh!” said Nancy. “Another island.”
The ex-cook heard her.
“Thlee Islands,” he said and pointed down the river.
They looked, but Dragon Island seemed to be all in one piece.
“Perhaps he means the little island where we landed,” said John. “It’s hidden, round the corner, behind those cliffs.”
But the ex-cook was pointing almost straight across the river.
“He must mean there’s a way through,” said John, “but you can’t see it from here.”
“Thlee Islands,” said the ex-cook again. He said a name in Chinese, hesitated and found the word he wanted. “Tort. … Turtle Island. Taicoon Wu. Tiger Island … Taicoon Chang. Ten gong Taicoons. …” And then, drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders proudly. … “Thlee Islands. We …” He tapped his chest. “We Thlee Islands men and Missee Lee our Taicoon. Twenty-two gong Taicoon,” he added, making as if to count on his fingers.
“I say,” said Nancy. “You know our Taicoon. All the others run like rabbits for him. If Missee Lee’s a bigger boss than him, she must be pretty good as a pirate.” And then, as she looked before her and saw how the road dipped steeply down towards the anchorage she thought of something very different. “Giminy,” she said. “If they begin to trot now we’re done.”
But for a long time they did not. The donkeys were allowed to choose their own pace till they were down among the trees and paddy-fields. Then, at a signal, donkeys and men set off just as hard as they could, as if to show that they had been hurrying all the way. The men ran, the donkeys galloped, and, in a cloud of dust, they came to a rough quay at the side of the river.
“Hully, hully,” panted the one-time cook.
The prisoners found themselves being pulled off their donkeys. Staggering as if they had been long at sea, as indeed they had, though it had never made them so unsteady, they were hurried out on the quay and down into a wide, square-ended boat. The boatmen had been waiting for them and the moment prisoners and guards were aboard, they pushed off from the quay.
“Aren’t the donks coming too?” said Roger.
“Doesn’t look like it,” said John.
“Good,” said Roger.
CHAPTER XI
DRAGON TOWN
THE ferry-boat was moving. One ferryman had joined the other on a platform in the stern and the two of them, facing each other, were swaying a long sweep to and fro. The sweep was not straight, but had a kink in the middle of it.
“It works on that pivot,” said John. “But why do they have an elbow in it?”
“Make it go cockeye,” said Nancy. “First one side and then the other.”
“Like sculling,” said John, watching the blade of the sweep which turned one way when going from port to starboard and the other way when going from starboard to port.
The thought of sculling reminded them both of working their little dinghies with an oar over the stern in and out of narrow places on the lake at home in the far away north.
“Gosh, I wish they hadn’t bagged Swallow,” said John.
“And Amazon,” said Nancy.
But being afloat, even if they were only crossing a river in a broad flat-bottomed Chinese ferry-boat, made everybody feel better. They were on water again, and moving, and they felt like fish that had been flapping about on dry land and had somehow got back into the sea. They forgot that they were prisoners, forgot the painful shape of Chinese donkey saddles, and, with the eyes of six experienced seamen, looked at the small sampans tethered to poles along the bank or lying astern of the big fighting junks in the anchorage, and admired the skill of the ferrymen working their long sweep.
“Why are we going along the shore instead of straight across?” asked Roger, pointing over the river to the landing-place on the further side, where there were men waiting on a jetty and they could see walls and roofs among the trees.
“Current,” said John. “They’ll work upstream before crossing. No good going straight and being swept too far down. Look how the water’s swirling past those junks.”
“Beast of a current,” said Nancy. “Just you try working against it with nothing but a bottom-board.”
“The junks have all got eyes,” said Titty, seeing the big black and white eyes painted on their bows.
“See their way about,” said Roger.
“I say,” said Nancy. “That’s our junk. Look at the guns poking out. They must have brought her up since yesterday. Drying the mainsail. Look, John. You see what I meant when I told you they had about a dozen sheets to each sail, one to every batten.”
“Why don’t they have the ferry at a narrower place?” said Susan.
“Current’s worse in the narrows,” said John. “Here they get a bit of slack water each side.”
The ferry-boat was being slowly driven up-stream twenty yards or so out from the shore. Already the
y were well above the landing-place. On the opposite side they could see where a wall ran down to the water’s edge. The town itself was hidden by trees and they could see nothing of it but a tower and a flagstaff.
“I say, there’s a lovely creek over there,” said Roger.
“And a baby junk in it,” cried Titty. “Just like the big ones, only smaller.”
“Perhaps that’s where we’re going to land,” said Roger.
John looked at the curl in the water pouring down the middle of the river. “We aren’t,” he said. “They’re beginning to work her out already. We’ll hit the other side just about opposite where we started from.”
The ferrymen were working harder now. They were chanting as, facing each other, one pulling, the other pushing, they swayed to and fro across the platform in the stern. The ferry-boat was moving out into the stream, still heading up, but being swept down faster and faster as it came out into the main current.
There was a sudden yell from Nancy. “Giminy!” she shouted. “Look! Look! There’s Amazon, pulled up in that creek, and Swallow just beyond her.”
“Where’s that telescope?” said John.
Titty began fumbling at her pocket. “Better not,” said John, remembering where they were. “They might grab it.” Titty pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose instead.
They had been staring at the little junk in the creek, bright in scarlets and blues with a streak of green along her bulwarks and green tops to her three masts. Just for one moment they were able to see their own little boats, and then, with a tug at their heartstrings, they lost sight of them as the ferry-boat moving across drifted down below the opening into the creek. A moment later even the green tops of the little junk’s masts were hidden by the trees. They turned to see that they were dropping fast downstream towards the bigger junks at anchor.
“Hee … yo … hee … yo,” chanted the ferrymen.
“We’re going to hit that first one,” said Peggy. “We are.”
“Good work,” cried Nancy, as, with a tremendous effort the ferryman drove their boat clear. They just missed the anchor hawser and swept past the big junk almost near enough to touch it, while men in pointed straw hats looked down on them and jeered as sailors always do jeer in harbour at other sailors who have narrow shaves of bumping their new paint.
“Hee … yo … hee … yo,” chanted the ferrymen. The sweat was pouring in streams down their naked brown backs, and dripping from their faces on the wooden platform. But already the boat was sweeping past the last of the anchored fleet and was coming quickly nearer to the other side of the river. A sampan with some Chinese in long robes and others with rifles like their own guards, had left one of the junks and was racing them for the jetty.
“More prisoners,” said Nancy, almost as if she were herself one of the pirates.
The sampan and the ferry-boat reached the jetty together. The men from the sampan scrambled ashore with their prisoners and set off at a run up from the landing-place towards a gateway in the brown wall of the town. Their own guards shepherded them ashore and, falling in beside them, marched them briskly after the others.
“Why isn’t Uncle Jim here to meet us?” said Peggy.
“Probably smoking a pipe of peace with the pirates,” said Nancy.
“Not if Miss Lee’s like the Great Aunt,” said Roger.
“She isn’t,” said Nancy. “She’s a pirate. Don’t be a galoot.”
“If Captain Flint’s found someone who can really talk English,” said Susan, “he’s probably getting a telegram sent home to say we’re all right.”
“But are we?” said Peggy.
“We’re jolly soon going to be,” said Nancy.
Through the gateway they passed into something much more like a town than Chang’s village on Tiger Island. There were many more houses, for one thing, though there seemed to be very few people. The streets, between the low, green-roofed houses, were not paved, but just earth trodden smooth. Pigs were wandering about. There was the harsh trilling of grasshoppers in the trees. Dust rose about their feet. A big blue butterfly fluttered across the street above their heads. Here and there women were sitting in the open doorways. A small boy sitting in the dust and tootling to himself on a long bamboo flute, took his flute from his lips and stared at the prisoners as they went by. But, for a town, the place seemed empty.
IN THE COURTYARD
“There’s an awful lot of people somewhere,” said Roger. “Can’t you hear them?” Suddenly he pointed. “They’ve got a dragon here too.”
Here, as in Tiger Town, women squatting in the dust were stitching away at the partly unrolled body of a dragon. Its huge grinning head lolled on the ground. Part of the body lay like a narrow carpet where the women were working at it. The rest was like a carpet rolled up for storage.
“I say, it must be a mile long when they spread it all out,” said Roger. “It’s a new one. The head hasn’t been painted yet. I say, I wish they’d let us stop and have a look at it.”
There was no chance of stopping now. The guards hurried them along, and all the time, though there seemed to be no one about, the noise of a crowd grew louder and louder. Suddenly they turned up a short road that ended in a sort of three-storied tower with a gateway under it. Here they were stopped. Questions were being asked and answered by their guards.
“Passwords,” said Nancy. “This is the real thing.”
“Pretty fair scrum,” said Roger, looking through under the arch.
“I do think Uncle Jim might have come out to meet us,” said Peggy. “What’s that clicking noise?”
Through all the noise of the chattering crowd there came a queer sound of clicking, now stopping, now going on again, as if people were dropping pebbles on a hard floor.
“We’ll know in a minute,” said Susan.
“Now,” said Titty under her breath.
A guard gave a tug at her sleeve. She remembered quickly to keep grinning. With their guards all round them they walked through the gateway into a shouting crowd of Chinese. The din was like the noise of a street market. They were in a courtyard like Chang’s, only very much bigger, sloping gently up to the steps of a big, steep-roofed building with a wide verandah in front of it. Up there, over the heads of the crowd, they could see two banners, one, the green banner with Chang’s black and orange tiger on it, the other a banner with something like a huge grey tortoise on a scarlet ground. There were more buildings on either side of the courtyard. Some of these, too, had open verandahs three or four steps up, and there, above the level of the crowd, were men with shaven heads squatting on the floor busy flicking beads to and fro on wires strung in wooden frames.
“Look, Peggy,” said Roger. “That’s what that noise is.”
“Abacus,” said Titty. “There’s a picture of it in Petit Larousse.”
“I know,” said Roger. “Doing sums.”
“Hullo,” said Nancy. “There’s our captain.”
They were glad in all that crowd of strangers to see a face they knew, even if it was the face of the captain of a pirate junk. Nancy made as if to go and speak to him, but was stopped at once by the guards.
“Our” captain was talking to one of the prisoners who had been brought ashore in the sampan. The man took a bag out of his sleeve and offered it to him. The captain did not take it but motioned to a man standing by him who took the bag and passed it up to another man waiting on a verandah above him, who turned it upside down, emptying a great stream of silver dollars on the floor in front of one of the squatting men. One of the dollars rolled off and came to Roger’s feet. He picked it up, looked at it and gave it to a guard who passed it up to the man on the verandah. The man squatting on the floor quickly sorted the money into little heaps. He had a pair of brass scales in which he weighed each heap separately, pouring the money from the scale into a general pile. Each time he did this he flicked a bead across the abacus. When he had done he nodded and spoke to the captain. The captain and the man who had broug
ht the money bowed to each other. The captain spoke to the guards who went off with the man towards the upper end of the courtyard.
“What was he doing?” asked Roger.
“Paying a ransom, I bet,” said Nancy.
The captain, looking very pleased with himself, turned and saw them.
“Talkee English, bimeby,” he said.
“Where’s Captain Flint?” asked Nancy. “San Francisco,” she added, remembering what the Taicoon had called him last night.
The captain pointed up the yard and led the way through the crowd, followed by the guards with their six prisoners. Where the crowd was thickest they found a barred enclosure like a lion cage at the zoo, divided into compartments. Outside the first of them the elderly man they had seen paying the ransom was eagerly talking to another elderly man behind the bars. The two of them, the man in the cage and the man outside, were exactly alike.
“Blothers,” laughed the captain over his shoulder. He pushed on. The crowd parted before him and suddenly they were looking at Captain Flint. He was sitting on a narrow perch in a bamboo cage in which there was only just room for him. The cage was indeed very like a hen-coop, and it had long carrying poles, like Chang’s chair. The captain smacked the head of a small boy who, with the long feathery tip of a green bamboo, was tickling Captain Flint through the bars.
“Why haven’t they let him out?” said Nancy angrily.
Missee Lee Page 13
