The Shipwreck | Page 8

age," groaned
the Captain.
"You leave all with me. The boy is on board. That is enough--"
CHAPTER IV.
With the Priest of the God of the Golden Fish.
On the south side of the island of Hongkong are a number of small
villages occupied by fishermen. Any one of these hidden away under
the shade of the great bamboos may be taken as a type of all the others.
The little houses have roofs made of reeds and bundles of twigs, but
these do not serve so well for protection from wind and weather as the
thick foliage of the overhanging trees. On the beach fishing nets are
spread to dry; and in the calm waters of the little bay a number of poor
old junks ride lazily at anchor. One of these is drawn up on the shore
and the men are examining the haul of fish just brought in. Women and
children with baskets and buckets are hurrying down to the beach to do
their part in the work of sorting. The large shining blue fishes with
bands of blue and rose-red and the yellow ones with spots of red and
green they pack in small baskets between rows of green leaves. The
lobsters, always plentiful, they place in baskets having compartments
so that they cannot get at each other and mangle their bodies fighting;
the oysters they throw into a large common bucket, keeping out the

small and inferior ones to carry to their huts to use for food. Whenever
wind and weather permit the men go off on fishing expeditions, and
this is the usual scene which attends their home coming. Then,
according to whether the haul has been a good or a poor one, Lihoa, the
oldest man in the village, says: "We will take to the God of the Sea who
rides on the Golden Fish a thank offering," or "The God who rides on
the Golden Fish is angry with us; we must pacify him with strips of
gold-paper." And, regularly on an appointed day, the old man goes up
to the cell of the priest carrying the thank- or the sin-offering, as the
case may be, to the God with the dreadful goggle eyes who rides a
gilded sea-monster.
On the day on which the crosses had been erected on the Cathedral of
the Holy Saviour Lihoa and his people had had a miserably small catch
of fish.
"My children," cried Lihoa, "what crime against the God of the Golden
Fish have you committed? So small a haul as this we have not had for a
year and a day. The New Year is at hand. How can we have our usual
celebration with only a sapeck or two in our pockets?"
"How shall we celebrate the New Year?" cried one. "How shall we
appease the God?" wailed others mournfully.
An old Chinaman, whose wrinkled face looked like parchment cried
out:
"Why do you even ask the cause of our bad luck? Do you not know
why it has come upon us? Were not those white-faced women here
again yesterday whose God is the enemy of our God? Again they have
carried off bur babies to the great white house in Hongkong. Why do
not the people kill the superfluous children according to the old custom
of the land? Why let living children get into the hands of these foreign
women to be murdered and to have their eyes and hearts stewed up into
magic drinks? The God of the Golden Fish is angry with us. Not
another good haul shall we have; and what is more we shall be
swallowed up in the sea, if we allow any more children to be taken to
the house of the foreign God."

"Be still, be still, old Loha," answered Lihoa. "You don't know what
you are taking about. I myself have been to the great white house of the
foreign women in Hongkong. There they do naught but good, and
nobody ever hears of your doing anything good from morning till night.
Our children are better taken care of there than here in our poor old
huts. If our women only loved their babes as much as these white-faced
women do! Be still. Your drivelling talk about stewing up their eyes
and hearts to make drinks is all a foolish lie. Did we not open one of
the graves of one of the children to see if the eyes and hearts were there?
And they were. A nephew of mine, the son of my sister Luli, who was
exposed twelve years ago by his mother, because her husband was
drowned and she had no means of bringing him up, was taken to the
great house and now he is a splendid big boy. From