A DISCOVERY IN THE SWAMP
The situation of the young fellow was now pitiable in the extreme. He
did not know where to turn. There were six other white men in the
place, of whom only two were English; and as he canvassed them one by
one in his mind, he recognized that it was hopeless to apply to any of
them. Remorse, bitter self-reproach for his folly, mingled with the
harrowing fear of ruin and exposure. He thought of the pleasant months
he had spent in Mr. Burroughs' house; the kindness all had shown him;
the confidence they had put in him; and the thought of losing the good
opinion of his friends was agony. He felt that he had kicked away the
supports that might have been his. A word to the Mole would, he knew,
bring his old friend to his help; but there was that miserable
difference between them. A simple promise to Mr. Ting would save him;
but pride held him back, and the suspicions that were poisoning his
mind. Feeling utterly lost, he went to his room, and buried his aching
head on the pillow.
Reinhardt came to him next day.
"Well, did Ting shell out?" he said.
"No," replied Errington. "Give me a week, Reinhardt; I'll pay you in a
week, or----"
"Do nozink foolish, my boy. Zat's all right; I will wait a week; in a
week anyzink may happen."
On Errington's part it was a mere staving-off of the evil day--a
clutching at a straw; the last desperate hope of the gambler that time
was on his side.
But how to kill time? He could not attend to his business; there was
little else to be done except play cards, and besides having no money,
he hated cards now with a savage hatred. Hearing, however, from one of
the Englishmen in the place that there was good duck-shooting some few
miles up the river, he resolved to go for a day's sport. The Viceroy's
request that the Europeans would not venture beyond their own settlement
was forgotten, in spite of the fact that it had lately been repeated
with some urgency. The country was disturbed, and the swamps haunted by
the wild fowl were in the midst of the district affected. They
surrounded a number of small villages which were known to be the nests
of river pirates, and hot-beds of the insurrectionary movement. To the
ordinary traveller the villages were almost unapproachable, being
situated on dry tracts encompassed by the reedy marshes that extended
for some miles inland from the banks of the river.
One morning Errington started in a native sampan with his Chinese
servant. On approaching the spot of which he had been told, he noticed
that Lo San looked uneasily at some large Chinese characters painted in
white on a rock at the river-side.
"Well, what is it?" he asked.
"Ho tao pu ching," replied the man. "Way no flee."
"Not free! Not clear, I suppose you mean. Why not? There's plenty of
room between the rocks."
"Pilates, sah; plenty bad fellas."
"Hang the pirates! It's very kind of the billposter, but we've nothing
worth scooping. Go on."
But game appeared to be scarce. Duck were seen in the distance, but
Errington could never get within range. Determined not to return
empty-handed, he went farther into the swamp, and was punting towards a
thick growth of reeds fringing a piece of open water, on the far side of
which he had noticed some birds, when his eye was caught by a boat
floating apparently towards this open water down a narrow and irregular
channel from the Yang-tse. The channel was so much overgrown with reeds
and rushes that it was not easy to distinguish the nature of the
approaching craft. Errington took up his binocular and scanned it,
expecting to discover that it was a sampan, like that in which he was
himself travelling. But on closer inspection it proved to be more like
a dinghy, and probably belonged to some vessel anchored in the
neighbourhood.
It was too far off for him to see clearly the two men in the dinghy;
they had their backs to him, but their general appearance suggested
Chinamen. All at once a slight turn in their course revealed what had
previously not been visible, they were towing an object of much larger
size. It was impossible to distinguish it; it might be a raft or a
large sampan loaded with goods.
Reckless as his mood was, Errington was not utterly rash, or disposed to
court danger out of pure wilfulness. While he was watching the boats,
he drew the sampan within the shelter of the clump of reeds through
which he was making his way.
"Take a look," he said, handing the binocular to his servant, who,
however, preferred to use his own eyes.
"China fellas, sah," he said in a low voice. "My tinkee better go back
chop-chop."
The man had felt all along that his master was foolish to come alone
into these parts, so far from the town; but he knew the Englishman's
temper, and the rejection of his former word of warning had kept him
silent since. Now, however, the sight of a strange boat, manned by
Chinamen, near the haunts of the pirates, induced him to offer more
definite advice.
But in vain. Errington was not the man to be scared by actual dangers,
still less imaginary ones. The moving boats had frightened away the
ducks, so that there was no present chance of sport. And having nothing
better to do for the moment, he drove the sampan quietly still farther
among the reeds, bade Lo San keep still, and settled to watch the
strangers.
As they drew nearer, he noticed something that piqued his curiosity.
The men in the boat, whom he now knew to be Chinamen, looked cautiously
around, as if to make sure that they were not observed. Screened though
he was by the reeds, Errington had the curious sensation which watchers
often have, that those whom he could see also saw him. But the men gave
no sign of uneasiness; the dinghy passed behind the further edge of the
clump of reeds, and disappeared.
Errington was now sufficiently interested to determine to wait. Ten or
twelve minutes afterwards, the nose of the dinghy emerged from the
rushes; the men turned it round, and made off in the direction from
which they had come. But Errington saw at a glance that there was now
no object astern of them. He wondered what it was, and where it had
been left. Probably the circumstance would not have held his attention
for a moment but for the men's cautious look around; their manner
suggested that they were hiding something. It might be no business of
his; on the other hand, it struck him that, since the incident had
happened in a district infested by pirates, some of these pests had
recently made a haul of goods. He felt that at all hazards he must
satisfy himself; not that there appeared to be any danger, but he could
not tell but that, behind the screen of reeds at the farther end of the
open water, there might be an encampment of the water-rats, as these
gentry were called by the Englishmen. The object with which Errington
had set out was forgotten; duck-shooting was an exciting sport, but it
did not challenge his imagination as did the possibility of a contest of
wits or activity with men; and with nerves braced he resolved to
investigate.
Venturesome as he was in ordinary circumstances, Errington was not
without the instinctive cautiousness of the born scout. He did not,
therefore, head straight across the pool, as any one who knew him
slightly, and argued only from his impulsiveness, might have expected
him to do. Instead, he forced the sampan slowly and with some
difficulty through the margin of rushes bordering the pool. Many other
channels besides that on which the boat had come, led from the open
water to the river. Coming to one of these narrower passages, he
glanced up and down before crossing it, to make sure that there were no
other men who might see him and interfere with his movements. His
object was to reach the wider channel, and then follow the course that
had been taken by the dinghy.
It occurred to him that the dinghy, when it disappeared among the
rushes, might have towed the second craft to a pirate encampment; and as
the direction in which it had gone was on his right-hand side, he took
the left-hand side of the pool, and punted slowly along until he came to
a spot where the broad channel was open to his view for a considerable
distance. He looked in the direction in which the dinghy was going when
he last saw it. It was no longer in sight. With another cautious glance
round, pausing for a few moments to listen, he crept out into the pool,
and set out for the other side. It was not very difficult to find the
narrow opening in the reeds through which the dinghy had passed with the
other vessel in tow. But when he had once entered it, he saw how almost
impossible it would have been to find his way had he not carefully noted
the exact place of entry. Reeds grew out of the water on every side.
There was no real passage; apparently it was not a regular waterway, and
he ceased to expect to see any human habitation at the further end,
wherever that might be. The water was shallow, and the only indication
that it was navigable at all was afforded by the bent rushes where the
two craft had previously passed.
After proceeding for a few yards, however, he found that the water
became slightly deeper, and there were some signs of the reeds having
been cut. An attempt had apparently been made to clear a channel. His
former idea returned to him; perhaps it led to an encampment after all.
He drove the sampan on with even greater caution, becoming more and more
interested as he noticed how the channel wound this way and that among
the thickest beds of rushes.
Threading this tortuous channel for perhaps a hundred yards, he came
with startling suddenness upon the object of his search. The reeds came
to an end, and on a stretch of firm ground, rising three or four feet
above the level of the swamp, four or five low ramshackle huts,
constructed of poles and matting, stood about thirty yards back from the
edge of the water. The space between them and the water was littered
with an extraordinary miscellany of objects, all of them of a more or
less imperishable character--pots and pans, vases, tiles, native images,
and other things, which from their arrangement in bales, bundles, or
stacks, appeared to be articles of merchandise, but not in actual use
here.
With his knowledge of the kind of thing that went on in these swamps,
Errington at once guessed that these objects were the spoil of trading
vessels captured by the river pirates and brought to this cunningly
devised or carefully sought hiding-place. There were black rings here
and there on the ground that were without doubt the marks of camp-fires.
But the place had a deserted, a neglected, look. The huts were boarded
up, except where they were so tumbledown that no such precaution was
possible. Three or four old and rickety sampans were drawn up at the
brink. But the object which had been towed by the dinghy was floating,
secured by a rope to one of the uprights of a ruined hut close to the
shore.
Errington looked at it curiously. It appeared from its shape to be a
boat of some kind, but being completely covered with matting its
outlines were indistinguishable. Wondering what its contents could be,
to be so carefully covered up, Errington punted the sampan alongside,
and lifted a corner of the matting. What he saw gave him a surprise
comparable only to a galvanic shock. Underneath was a stretch of canvas
that exactly resembled a wing of the flying boat, folded back, as
Burroughs' custom was when the vessel was not in use. Lifting the
matting further, Errington had no more doubt. The object before him,
shapeless and ungainly as it was under its cover, was indeed the flying
boat.
Lo San's astonishment was equal to his own. The Chinaman uttered a
smothered "Hai!" then looked fearfully around, as if expecting that the
sound would bring a crew of the dreaded pirates yelling about them. But
there was no sound, no sign of life.
Errington's first impulse was to tow the vessel out, and convey it to
his own station. Then a doubt crossed his mind. The dinghy which had
brought it to this spot had been unmistakably of European build. The
vessel from which it had come was probably not far distant. Perhaps
Burroughs himself was on it. Errington puzzled his brain to hit upon
any reason why his old friend should have wished to conceal his
hydroplane in this swamp. Had he come up on business, or pleasure?
Could it be that Mr. Ting, in his journey down-stream, had called at
Sui-Fu, informed Burroughs of the mess into which Errington had got, and
persuaded him to come up and attempt to set matters right? The thought
made him angry. He flushed hot at what, in his perverted imagination,
he looked upon as a breach of confidence.
"Hanged if I'll interfere!" his thoughts ran. "I'm not the keeper of
the thing, confound it!" (This was the vessel in which he and Burroughs
had spent so many pleasant hours.) "A pretty ass I should look if I
took it back, and found that the Mole intended it to be hidden. The
place is evidently deserted. No, I'm dashed if I do anything. It's no
concern of mine."
Dropping the matting back, he swung the sampan round, and begun to punt
somewhat savagely towards the pool. The old sore was reopened. The
occupation and excitement had for a time banished all recollection of
his wretched circumstances; but everything now came back to him; the
weight bore down again upon his spirit.
"Makee too muchee bobbely,[#] sah!" murmured Lo San anxiously.
[#] Noise.
The warning recalled Errington's caution. He was still within the
pirates' hunting-ground. He took care to urge the sampan less violently;
but, on coming safely to the river, resumed his energetic movements. It
was a long pull back, and he was tired when, late in the afternoon, he
again reached the town.