The Shipwreck | Page 8

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 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