The Shipwreck | Page 9

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 rich Natse, and even richer, if we go on the ship to the southland."
"Yes", said one of the oyster carriers, "if all that is true--"
"And if we are not drowned on the long journey," put in another.
"Or, if 'the devils from the West' do not kill us for our money after we have brought all the gold from the land to the ship for them," put in the third fish carrier.
"Yes, but if I knew that I would surely come back with some of the gold, I would go," added the fourth.
"There, just see how sharp you all are!" said Lohe. "Just such doubts as these troubled my friends and myself, so we are here to