Dragons Blood | Page 5

keel.
"Zimmerman recalled," the interpretation ran; "take his station; proceed at once."
He knew the port only as forlorn and insignificant. It did not matter. One consolation remained: he would never see her again.
CHAPTER II
THE PIED PIPER
A gray smudge trailing northward showed where the Fa-Hien--Scottish Oriental, sixteen hundred tons--was disappearing from the pale expanse of ocean. The sampan drifted landward imperceptibly, seeming, with nut-brown sail unstirred, to remain where the impatient steamer had met it, dropped a solitary passenger overside, and cast him loose upon the breadth of the antipodes. Rare and far, the sails of junks patched the horizon with umber polygons. Rudolph, sitting among his boxes in the sampan, viewed by turns this desolate void astern and the more desolate sweep of coast ahead. His matting sail divided the shining bronze outpour of an invisible river, divided a low brown shore beyond, and above these, the strips of some higher desert country that shone like snowdrifts, or like sifted ashes from which the hills rose black and charred. Their savage, winter-blasted look, in the clear light of an almost vernal morning, made the land seem fabulous. Yet here in reality, thought Rudolph, as he floated toward that hoary kingdom,--here at last, facing a lonely sea, reared the lifeless, inhospitable shore, the sullen margin of China.
The slow creaking of the spliced oar, swung in its lashing by a half-naked yellow man, his incomprehensible chatter with some fellow boatman hidden in the bows, were sounds lost in a drowsy silence, rhythms lost in a wide inertia. Time itself seemed stationary. Rudolph nodded, slept, and waking, found the afternoon sped, the hills gone, and his clumsy, time-worn craft stealing close under a muddy bank topped with brown weeds and grass. They had left behind the silted roadstead, and now, gliding on a gentle flood, entered the river-mouth. Here and there, against the saffron tide, or under banks quaggy as melting chocolate, stooped a naked fisherman, who--swarthy as his background but for a loin-band of yellow flesh--shone wet and glistening while he stirred a dip-net through the liquid mud. Faint in the distance harsh cries sounded now and then, and the soft popping of small-arms,--tiny revolts in the reign of a stillness aged and formidable. Crumbling walls and squat ruins, black and green-patched with mould--old towers of defense against pirates--guarded from either bank the turns of the river. In one reach, a "war-junk," her sails furled, lay at anchor, the red and white eyes staring fish-like from her black prow: a silly monster, the painted tompions of her wooden cannon aiming drunkenly askew, her crew's wash fluttering peacefully in a line of blue dungaree.
Beyond the next turn, a fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed in the bronze flood alongside.
"Hang it!" complained a voice, loudly. "The beggar was too--Hallo! Oh, I say, Gilly! Gilly, ahoy! Pick us up, there's a good chap! The bird first, will you, and then me."
A tall young man in brown holland and a battered terai stood above on the grassy brink.
"Oh, beg pardon," he continued. "Took you for old Gilly, you know." He snapped the empty shells from his gun, and blew into the breech, before adding, "Would you mind, then? That is, if you're bound up for Stink-Chau. It's a beastly long tramp, and I've been shooting all afternoon."
Followed by three coolies who popped out of the grass with game-bags, the young stranger descended, hopped nimbly from tussock to gunwale, and perched there to wash his boots in the river.
"Might have known you weren't old Gilly," he said over his shoulder. "Wutzler said the Fa-Hien lay off signaling for sampan before breakfast. Going to stay long?"
"I am agent," answered Rudolph, with a touch of pride, "for Fliegelman and Sons."
"Oh?" drawled the hunter, lazily. He swung his legs inboard, faced about, and studied Rudolph with embarrassing frankness. He was a long-limbed young Englishman, whose cynical gray eyes, and thin face tinged rather sallow and Oriental, bespoke a reckless good humor. "Life sentence, eh? Then your name's--what is it again?--Hackh, isn't it? Heywood's mine. So you take Zimmerman's place. He's off already, and good riddance. He was a bounder!--Charming spot you've come to! I daresay if your Fliegelmans opened a hong in hell, you might possibly get a worse station."
Without change of manner, he uttered a few gabbling, barbaric words. A coolie knelt, and with a rag began to clean the boots, which, from the expression of young Mr. Heywood's face, were more interesting than the arrival of a new manager from Germany.
"It will be dark before we're in," he said. "My place for the night, of course, and let your predecessor's leavings stand over till daylight. After dinner we'll go to the club. Dinner! Chicken and rice, chicken and rice!