The Shipwreck | Page 9

there they sent him
to the school, and he can speak and write the Chinese language and also
that of the West. Some day I shall go and get him and bring him back
to live with our family.--Ah! here we stand and gossip like old women,
while the sun is sinking. It is time to take the fish and the oysters to the
market. Whose turn is it to go?"
Four men stepped forward and raised the wooden yoke having attached
to it buckets of oysters and baskets of fish. The sack containing the
crabs Lihoa himself swung over his shoulder, and they started at a
quick pace up the hill over which the path to Victoria lay. The women
as they turned to go with the children to the huts to prepare the evening
meal bade them farewell and called out, "A fortunate sale!"
Night settled down quickly, for in a tropical climate the twilight does
not last so long as with us. In Hongkong the sun hardly sets before it is
dark, and this evening as the moon, almost at the full, stood high in the
heavens, Lihoa had no occasion to light the little lantern which he
carried with him. He found the footpath leading up the hill without
difficulty, and his people followed after him goose-fashion in single
file. Almost at the top they came to the cell in the rock occupied by the
priest of the God of the Golden Fish, and in the moonlight to their
astonishment saw in the broad open space in front of it a group of men
from the neighboring villages. At a signal from Lihoa the carriers
placed their burden upon the ground and all went forward to see what

the gathering meant.
"Have you heard nothing, Lihoa, of the great scheme which is on foot?"
asked the leader of the most important of the villages on the north coast
of Hongkong. "Has not the recruiting officer of the rich Natse been to
your village?--Oh, it is so small and hidden away that he does not deem
it worth his while to go to you, and then, besides, the three hundred
who are wanted have announced their intention to go, for who would
remain here and tiresomely drag out existence with the niggardly sums
to be made from fishing when elsewhere the gold lies in such heaps
that one can pick up whole bags full in a few days?"
"How? What? For heaven's sake!--sacks full of gold in a few days?"
cried Lihoa, who, like all Chinamen, was covetous of great wealth.
"Speak, Lohe, tell us, can we get some of the gold,--at least a handful
or two? It is just as you say, our village is the last and the very least in
the world, and not a soul has come to us with the good news. Tell us
the road to fortune."
The agent Lohe, who for each able-bodied Chinaman whom he secured,
received a hundred sapecks, agreed to tell Lihoa the road for the reason
that he was "his cousin and was glad to do him a little service". He
pictured to him a land, bearing the barbaric name Australia, which the
"devils from the West" had discovered many days' journey away
beyond the islands to the south, where the gold lay in the fields like the
stones on the island of Hongkong, and where great nuggets, as large as
a man's head, were to be had. This Goldland "the devils from the West"
wanted for themselves, but the priest of the God, in whose cell he had
just been, said that this gold could be taken away only by the sons of
the Celestial Kingdom, that the treasures of this land belonged to the
Chinese, and not to the barbarians of the West. The sly discoverers of
the Goldland had come to get the Chinese to bring these lumps of gold
to their ships, where the men from the West and the sons of the
Celestial Kingdom would divide the spoils. The rich Natse was out in
search of three hundred men to bring this gold from the distant land to
the south. Of course, each one of the three hundred fortunate enough to
go would receive his own weight in gold, and for him and his entire

family there would be a life of wealth and honor on his return home.
Thus Lohe explained the situation.
"More than a hundred pounds of gold, and wealth and honor," repeated
Lihoa, on whom the story of the gold which the God had said was to be
given to the Chinese and not to the hated barbarians from the West, had
made a deep impression.
"Have you heard it, my people? We can all become as rich as