Dragons Blood | Page 6

Better like it, though, for you'll eat nothing else, term of your life."
"You are very kind," began Rudolph; but this bewildering off-hand youngster cut him short, with a laugh:--
"No fear, you'll pay me! Your firm supplies unlimited liquor. Much good that ever did us, with old Zimmerman."
The sampan now slipped rapidly on the full flood, up a narrow channel that the setting of the sun had turned, as at a blow, from copper to indigo. The shores passed, more and more obscure against a fading light. A star or two already shone faint in the lower spaces. A second war-junk loomed above them, with a ruddy fire in the stern lighting a glimpse of squat forms and yellow goblin faces.
"It is very curious," said Rudolph, trying polite conversation, "how they paint so the eyes on their jonks."
"No eyes, no can see; no can see, no can walkee," chanted Heywood in careless formula. "I say," he complained suddenly, "you're not going to 'study the people,' and all that rot? We're already fed up with missionaries. Their cant, I mean; no allusion to cannibalism."
He lighted a cigarette. After the blinding flare of the match, night seemed to have fallen instantaneously. As their boat crept on to the slow creaking sweep, both maintained silence, Rudolph rebuked and lonely, Heywood supine beneath a comfortable winking spark.
"What I mean is," drawled the hunter, "we need all the good fellows we can get. Bring any new songs out? Oh, I forgot, you're a German, too.--A sweet little colony! Gilly's the only gentleman in the whole half-dozen of us, and Heaven knows he's not up to much.--Ah, we're in. On our right, fellow sufferers, we see the blooming Village of Stinks."
He had risen in the gloom. Beyond his shadow a few feeble lights burned low and scattered along the bank. Strange cries arose, the bumping of sampans, the mournful caterwauling of a stringed instrument.
"The native town's a bit above," he continued. "We herd together here on the edge. No concession, no bund, nothing."
Their sampan grounded softly in malodorous ooze. Each mounting the bare shoulders of a coolie, the two Europeans rode precariously to shore.
"My boys will fetch your boxes," called Heywood. "Come on."
The path, sometimes marshy, sometimes hard-packed clay or stone flags deeply littered, led them a winding course in the night. Now and then shapes met them and pattered past in single file, furtive and sinister. At last, where a wall loomed white, Heywood stopped, and, kicking at a wooden gate, gave a sing-song cry. With rattling weights, the door swung open, and closed behind them heavily. A kind of empty garden, a bare little inclosure, shone dimly in the light that streamed from a low, thick-set veranda at the farther end. Dogs flew at them, barking outrageously.
"Down, Chang! Down, Chutney!" cried their master. "Be quiet, Flounce, you fool!"
On the stone floor of the house, they leaped upon him, two red chows and a fox-terrier bitch, knocking each other over in their joy.
"Olo she-dog he catchee plenty lats," piped a little Chinaman, who shuffled out from a side-room where lamplight showed an office desk. "Too-day catchee. Plenty lats. No can."
"My compradore, Ah Pat," said Heywood to Rudolph. "Ah Pat, my friend he b'long number one Flickleman, boss man."
The withered little creature bobbed in his blue robe, grinning at the introduction.
"You welly high-tone man," he murmured amiably. "Catchee goo' plice."
"All the same, I don't half like it," was Heywood's comment later. He had led his guest upstairs into a bare white-washed room, furnished in wicker. Open windows admitted the damp sea breeze and a smell, like foul gun-barrels, from the river marshes. "Where should all the rats be coming from?" He frowned, meditating on what Rudolph thought a trifle. Above the sallow brown face, his chestnut hair shone oddly, close-cropped and vigorous. "Maskee, can't be helped.--O Boy, one sherry-bitters, one bamboo!"
"To our better acquaintance," said Rudolph, as they raised their glasses.
"What? Oh, yes, thanks," the other laughed. "Any one would know you for a griffin here, Mr. Hackh. You've not forgotten your manners yet."
When they had sat down to dinner in another white-washed room, and had undertaken the promised rice and chicken, he laughed again, somewhat bitterly.
"Better acquaintance--no fear! You'll be so well acquainted with us all that you'll wish you never clapped eyes on us." He drained his whiskey and soda, signaled for more, and added: "Were you ever cooped up, yachting, with a chap you detested? That's the feeling you come to have.--Here, stand by. You're drinking nothing."
Rudolph protested. Politeness had so far conquered habit, that he felt uncommonly flushed, genial, and giddy.
"That," urged Heywood, tapping the bottle, "that's our only amusement. You'll see. One good thing we can get is the liquor. 'Nisi damnose bibimus,'--forget how it runs: 'Drink hearty, or you'll die without