CHAPTER VII
A DISCOVERY IN THE SWAMP
The situation of the young fellow was now pitiable in the extreme. Hedid not know where to turn. There were six other white men in theplace, of whom only two were English; and as he canvassed them one byone in his mind, he recognized that it was hopeless to apply to any ofthem. Remorse, bitter self-reproach for his folly, mingled with theharrowing fear of ruin and exposure. He thought of the pleasant monthshe had spent in Mr. Burroughs' house; the kindness all had shown him;the confidence they had put in him; and the thought of losing the goodopinion of his friends was agony. He felt that he had kicked away thesupports that might have been his. A word to the Mole would, he knew,bring his old friend to his help; but there was that miserabledifference between them. A simple promise to Mr. Ting would save him;but pride held him back, and the suspicions that were poisoning hismind. Feeling utterly lost, he went to his room, and buried his achinghead on the pillow.
Reinhardt came to him next day.
"Well, did Ting shell out?" he said.
"No," replied Errington. "Give me a week, Reinhardt; I'll pay you in aweek, or----"
"Do nozink foolish, my boy. Zat's all right; I will wait a week; in aweek anyzink may happen."
On Errington's part it was a mere staving-off of the evil day--aclutching at a straw; the last desperate hope of the gambler that timewas on his side.
But how to kill time? He could not attend to his business; there waslittle else to be done except play cards, and besides having no money,he hated cards now with a savage hatred. Hearing, however, from one ofthe Englishmen in the place that there was good duck-shooting some fewmiles up the river, he resolved to go for a day's sport. The Viceroy'srequest that the Europeans would not venture beyond their own settlementwas forgotten, in spite of the fact that it had lately been repeatedwith some urgency. The country was disturbed, and the swamps haunted bythe wild fowl were in the midst of the district affected. Theysurrounded a number of small villages which were known to be the nestsof river pirates, and hot-beds of the insurrectionary movement. To theordinary traveller the villages were almost unapproachable, beingsituated on dry tracts encompassed by the reedy marshes that extendedfor some miles inland from the banks of the river.
One morning Errington started in a native sampan with his Chineseservant. On approaching the spot of which he had been told, he noticedthat Lo San looked uneasily at some large Chinese characters painted inwhite on a rock at the river-side.
"Well, what is it?" he asked.
"Ho tao pu ching," replied the man. "Way no flee."
"Not free! Not clear, I suppose you mean. Why not? There's plenty ofroom between the rocks."
"Pilates, sah; plenty bad fellas."
"Hang the pirates! It's very kind of the billposter, but we've nothingworth scooping. Go on."
But game appeared to be scarce. Duck were seen in the distance, butErrington could never get within range. Determined not to returnempty-handed, he went farther into the swamp, and was punting towards athick growth of reeds fringing a piece of open water, on the far side ofwhich he had noticed some birds, when his eye was caught by a boatfloating apparently towards this open water down a narrow and irregularchannel from the Yang-tse. The channel was so much overgrown with reedsand rushes that it was not easy to distinguish the nature of theapproaching craft. Errington took up his binocular and scanned it,expecting to discover that it was a sampan, like that in which he washimself travelling. But on closer inspection it proved to be more likea dinghy, and probably belonged to some vessel anchored in theneighbourhood.
It was too far off for him to see clearly the two men in the dinghy;they had their backs to him, but their general appearance suggestedChinamen. All at once a slight turn in their course revealed what hadpreviously not been visible, they were towing an object of much largersize. It was impossible to distinguish it; it might be a raft or alarge sampan loaded with goods.
Reckless as his mood was, Errington was not utterly rash, or disposed tocourt danger out of pure wilfulness. While he was watching the boats,he drew the sampan within the shelter of the clump of reeds throughwhich he was making his way.
"Take a look," he said, handing the binocular to his servant, who,however, preferred to use his own eyes.
"China fellas, sah," he said in a low voice. "My tinkee better go backchop-chop."
The man had felt all along that his master was foolish to come aloneinto these parts, so far from the town; but he knew the Englishman'stemper, and the rejection of his former word of warning had kept himsilent since. Now, however, the sight of a strange boat, manned byChinamen, near the haunts of the pirates, induced him to offer moredefinite advice.
But in vain. Errington was not the man to be scared by actual dangers,still less imaginary ones. The moving boats had frightened away theducks, so that there was no present chance of sport. And having nothingbetter to do for the moment, he drove the sampan quietly still fartheramong the reeds, bade Lo San keep still, and settled to watch thestrangers.
As they drew nearer, he noticed something that piqued his curiosity.The men in the boat, whom he now knew to be Chinamen, looked cautiouslyaround, as if to make sure that they were not observed. Screened thoughhe was by the reeds, Errington had the curious sensation which watchersoften have, that those whom he could see also saw him. But the men gaveno sign of uneasiness; the dinghy passed behind the further edge of theclump of reeds, and disappeared.
Errington was now sufficiently interested to determine to wait. Ten ortwelve minutes afterwards, the nose of the dinghy emerged from therushes; the men turned it round, and made off in the direction fromwhich they had come. But Errington saw at a glance that there was nowno object astern of them. He wondered what it was, and where it hadbeen left. Probably the circumstance would not have held his attentionfor a moment but for the men's cautious look around; their mannersuggested that they were hiding something. It might be no business ofhis; on the other hand, it struck him that, since the incident hadhappened in a district infested by pirates, some of these pests hadrecently made a haul of goods. He felt that at all hazards he mustsatisfy himself; not that there appeared to be any danger, but he couldnot tell but that, behind the screen of reeds at the farther end of theopen water, there might be an encampment of the water-rats, as thesegentry were called by the Englishmen. The object with which Erringtonhad set out was forgotten; duck-shooting was an exciting sport, but itdid not challenge his imagination as did the possibility of a contest ofwits or activity with men; and with nerves braced he resolved toinvestigate.
Venturesome as he was in ordinary circumstances, Errington was notwithout the instinctive cautiousness of the born scout. He did not,therefore, head straight across the pool, as any one who knew himslightly, and argued only from his impulsiveness, might have expectedhim to do. Instead, he forced the sampan slowly and with somedifficulty through the margin of rushes bordering the pool. Many otherchannels besides that on which the boat had come, led from the openwater to the river. Coming to one of these narrower passages, heglanced up and down before crossing it, to make sure that there were noother men who might see him and interfere with his movements. Hisobject was to reach the wider channel, and then follow the course thathad been taken by the dinghy.
It occurred to him that the dinghy, when it disappeared among therushes, might have towed the second craft to a pirate encampment; and asthe direction in which it had gone was on his right-hand side, he tookthe left-hand side of the pool, and punted slowly along until he came toa spot where the broad channel was open to his view for a considerabledistance. He looked in the direction in which the dinghy was going whenhe last saw it. It was no longer in sight. With another cautious glanceround, pausing for a few moments to listen, he crept out into the pool,and set out for the other side. It was not very difficult to find thenarrow opening in the reeds through which the dinghy had passed with theother ve
ssel in tow. But when he had once entered it, he saw how almostimpossible it would have been to find his way had he not carefully notedthe exact place of entry. Reeds grew out of the water on every side.There was no real passage; apparently it was not a regular waterway, andhe ceased to expect to see any human habitation at the further end,wherever that might be. The water was shallow, and the only indicationthat it was navigable at all was afforded by the bent rushes where thetwo craft had previously passed.
After proceeding for a few yards, however, he found that the waterbecame slightly deeper, and there were some signs of the reeds havingbeen cut. An attempt had apparently been made to clear a channel. Hisformer idea returned to him; perhaps it led to an encampment after all.He drove the sampan on with even greater caution, becoming more and moreinterested as he noticed how the channel wound this way and that amongthe thickest beds of rushes.
Threading this tortuous channel for perhaps a hundred yards, he camewith startling suddenness upon the object of his search. The reeds cameto an end, and on a stretch of firm ground, rising three or four feetabove the level of the swamp, four or five low ramshackle huts,constructed of poles and matting, stood about thirty yards back from theedge of the water. The space between them and the water was litteredwith an extraordinary miscellany of objects, all of them of a more orless imperishable character--pots and pans, vases, tiles, native images,and other things, which from their arrangement in bales, bundles, orstacks, appeared to be articles of merchandise, but not in actual usehere.
With his knowledge of the kind of thing that went on in these swamps,Errington at once guessed that these objects were the spoil of tradingvessels captured by the river pirates and brought to this cunninglydevised or carefully sought hiding-place. There were black rings hereand there on the ground that were without doubt the marks of camp-fires.But the place had a deserted, a neglected, look. The huts were boardedup, except where they were so tumbledown that no such precaution waspossible. Three or four old and rickety sampans were drawn up at thebrink. But the object which had been towed by the dinghy was floating,secured by a rope to one of the uprights of a ruined hut close to theshore.
Errington looked at it curiously. It appeared from its shape to be aboat of some kind, but being completely covered with matting itsoutlines were indistinguishable. Wondering what its contents could be,to be so carefully covered up, Errington punted the sampan alongside,and lifted a corner of the matting. What he saw gave him a surprisecomparable only to a galvanic shock. Underneath was a stretch of canvasthat exactly resembled a wing of the flying boat, folded back, asBurroughs' custom was when the vessel was not in use. Lifting thematting further, Errington had no more doubt. The object before him,shapeless and ungainly as it was under its cover, was indeed the flyingboat.
Lo San's astonishment was equal to his own. The Chinaman uttered asmothered "Hai!" then looked fearfully around, as if expecting that thesound would bring a crew of the dreaded pirates yelling about them. Butthere was no sound, no sign of life.
Errington's first impulse was to tow the vessel out, and convey it tohis own station. Then a doubt crossed his mind. The dinghy which hadbrought it to this spot had been unmistakably of European build. Thevessel from which it had come was probably not far distant. PerhapsBurroughs himself was on it. Errington puzzled his brain to hit uponany reason why his old friend should have wished to conceal hishydroplane in this swamp. Had he come up on business, or pleasure?Could it be that Mr. Ting, in his journey down-stream, had called atSui-Fu, informed Burroughs of the mess into which Errington had got, andpersuaded him to come up and attempt to set matters right? The thoughtmade him angry. He flushed hot at what, in his perverted imagination,he looked upon as a breach of confidence.
"Hanged if I'll interfere!" his thoughts ran. "I'm not the keeper ofthe thing, confound it!" (This was the vessel in which he and Burroughshad spent so many pleasant hours.) "A pretty ass I should look if Itook it back, and found that the Mole intended it to be hidden. Theplace is evidently deserted. No, I'm dashed if I do anything. It's noconcern of mine."
Dropping the matting back, he swung the sampan round, and begun to puntsomewhat savagely towards the pool. The old sore was reopened. Theoccupation and excitement had for a time banished all recollection ofhis wretched circumstances; but everything now came back to him; theweight bore down again upon his spirit.
"Makee too muchee bobbely,[#] sah!" murmured Lo San anxiously.
[#] Noise.
The warning recalled Errington's caution. He was still within thepirates' hunting-ground. He took care to urge the sampan less violently;but, on coming safely to the river, resumed his energetic movements. Itwas a long pull back, and he was tired when, late in the afternoon, heagain reached the town.
The Flying Boat: A Story of Adventure and Misadventure Page 7
