A TURN OF FORTUNE'S TIDE
For a moment Rob's heart beat quick with joy and his face became
radiant; then it clouded again as he said, quietly:
"I think you must be mistaken, sir; for I received a cablegram in
America that my father was too ill to travel, and longed to see me
before he died. That is the reason I am now here."
"No," asserted the stranger, whose name, as Rob afterwards learned, was
Bishop, "I am confident there can be no mistake, for I saw Dr. and Mrs.
Mason Hinckley in Hong-Kong. I was newly arrived, and had gone with an
acquaintance to arrange for a lot of stuff to be taken aboard the Canton
boat. While we were there, another boat of the same line came in from
the upper Si Kiang. She had but two European passengers, a lady, and her
husband who was so weak from illness that we assisted him to a carriage.
My friend knew them slightly, and after they were gone he told me that
they were a missionary doctor and his wife from Wu Hsing, that their
name was Hinckley, that the doctor had been critically ill, but had most
unexpectedly rallied, so that he was able to travel, and that they were
to leave for the States on the _China_, which sailed that evening. All
this was distinctly impressed on my mind by the news of the Wu Hsing
outbreak, which came a week later, and I was glad to remember that two
at least of the possible victims had escaped in time."
Rob listened breathlessly to these details, and, when Mr. Bishop
finished speaking, he exclaimed: "They are alive, then, and safe! If
I only had known, and stayed quietly where I was! Do you remember the
date, sir, on which you saw them in Hong-Kong?"
"Yes, it was the 10th of last month."
"The very day on which I was to have sailed from Tacoma, and they must
have sent another cable after I left Hatton. It's all right, though, and
I am too glad to care about anything else."
"It is too bad that you have missed each other, and still are on
opposite sides of the world; but I suppose you will follow them by the
next homeward-bound steamer, and so rejoin them inside of another six
weeks. I envy you, and only wish I had a prospect of again seeing the
States within the same number of months."
"I expect your chance is several times better than mine," laughed Rob,
who for the moment was too light-hearted to give a serious thought to
his own awkward predicament. "I would go quick enough if I could, but I
haven't the money even to pay my fare to Hong-Kong. So it looks as if
I'd have to stay here until I can earn the price of a ticket back to
where I have just come from. Do you happen to know of any one who could
give me a job?"
"I can't say at this moment," replied Mr. Bishop, regarding the lad
keenly as he spoke; "but I may think of some one. Where are you staying?"
"Nowhere. I only came on this morning's boat, and my baggage still is on
board."
"Then suppose you get it up here and stay with me for a day or two while
you look around. I've a big house, with plenty of room, and shall be
glad of your company. Besides, I expect you can help me a good deal with
my Chinese studies."
"All right, sir," assented Rob, promptly accepting this proposition,
"and I'll be back inside of an hour."
With this our lad hurried away, saying to himself as he went: "I believe
I must be one of the luckiest fellows in the world, and only a little
while ago I thought I was one of the most miserable. My biggest bit of
luck, though, was having Jo come to live at Hatton and teach me Chinese,
for that seems about the most valuable accomplishment a fellow can have
out here. I do wonder what became of him."
Rob crossed the canal bridge, went out through the big gate, that
promptly was opened at his approach, and turned down Heavenly Clouds
Street with the assured air of one who had resided in Canton all his
life. Then he received a shock, and at the same time proved himself
to be one of the very newest of new arrivals in that crafty city of
poverty-sharpened wits. On a bit of straw matting, spread above the
granite flagging of the narrow roadway, lay a child three or four years
old, apparently in the very grasp of death. Its eyes were closed, its
pale features were distorted as though by a spasm; it was gasping for
breath, and its hands were tightly clinched, while its poor little body
was only partially hidden beneath a bit of ragged, blue cloth. Beside
the dying child knelt a mother, bending over it and rocking her body
to and fro in an agony of grief, while tears streamed from her eyes.
She, too, was clad in rags, and evidently was in the last extremity of
poverty, since she had not even a kennel in which to conceal her dying
child from the curious gaze of the swarming street. No one stopped to
speak with her or to offer her the slightest aid in this time of her
sore distress; and as Rob, with swelling heart, gazed on this pitiful
picture, he said to himself that all Chinese were brutes and unworthy
the name of human beings.
"Can't something be done for them?" he asked of a passer-by, and
speaking in Chinese; but the man only laughed and hurried on without
answering. Then Rob spoke to the woman herself, but her grief was too
great to permit her to take heed, and she only stroked the face of her
dying child with gestures of despair. At this, feeling powerless to aid
her by any other means, Rob drew a silver dollar from his pocket and
gently laid it on the mat beside the little sufferer. Then he hurried
away.
While he was within sight the woman did not alter her position nor
offer to pick up his gift. Only when he had disappeared, and the
stealthy hand of a street urchin was about to close over the coveted
coin, did she snatch it from the mat, spring to her feet, deal the
would-be thief a stinging box on the ear, pick up her opium-drugged
child, and serenely walk away, well satisfied with the success of her
carefully planned tableau. When Rob returned that way he wondered what
had become of the dying child who had so excited his sympathies, and it
was only on the following day, when he again saw them at the same place,
going through the same performance, that he realized how he had been
duped.
On that first morning he transferred his belongings from the steamer
to the house of his newly made friend, who told him that, as there was
nothing in particular for him to do just then, he was free to go where
he pleased. So he strolled to the riverfront of the Shameen, where
from one of the tree-shaded benches, placed at intervals along its
length, he watched the wonderful life of the river, with its swarming
junks and sampans. After a while, attracted by a huge white-and-yellow
nondescript-appearing craft, moored in the stream at some distance above
where he sat, he walked in that direction for a closer view. He had
proceeded but a few steps when he was more than ever puzzled to note
that above the object of his curiosity floated an American flag, while
he also could see the grim muzzles of enormous guns protruding from
various parts of its superstructure. It evidently was a ship of some
kind, and also a man-of-war; but to Rob's eyes it was of even stranger
appearance than the closely packed acres of Chinese craft surrounding
it. He finally decided that it must be a wreck, resting on the bottom
of the river, since its deck appeared to be but a few inches above the
turbid waters, and he wondered why its crew, sauntering back and forth
beneath the awnings, did not exhibit more concern.
While Rob thus was puzzling, a young man, wearing the uniform of an
American naval officer, walked briskly up to where he was standing, and
signalled a sampan.
"Can you tell me, sir," asked our lad, addressing this officer, "what
American ship that is out there, and how she got wrecked?"
"Wrecked!" repeated the other. "What do you mean by wrecked? She looks
all right to me. Is anything the matter with the old packet?"
"Of course, I don't know much about wrecks," replied Rob, a little
nettled by the officer's tone, "but if a ship sunk to the bottom of a
Chinese river, nearly ten thousand miles from home, isn't wrecked, then
the word must mean something different from what I think it does."
"But she isn't sunk. She's floating all right, and showing fully as much
freeboard as she did when we brought her across the Pacific, nearly two
years ago. Monitors always look that way, you know."
"Monitor! Is she a monitor?" cried Rob, who never before had seen one of
this peculiarly American type of war-ship.
"To be sure. She is the United States monitor _Monterey_, one of the
finest of her class, and, with the exception of her sister-ship, the
_Monadnock_, now at Shanghai, the most powerful fighting-machine now
afloat in Asiatic waters. Wouldn't you like to go aboard and take a look
at her?"
Of course, Rob gladly accepted this invitation, and, entering the sampan
with Lieutenant Hibbard, was sculled out to the floating fortress, which
always lies off Canton, providing a safe-refuge for foreigners against a
storm of wrath such as sometimes sweeps over that turbulent city. She is
at the same time a most effective peace-keeper, since the Chinese know
as well as any one that her powerful guns could within a few hours lay
their metropolis in ruins.
The _Monterey_ is famous as having been the first ship of her class to
cross the Pacific to Manila, where she added such strength to Dewey's
handful of war-ships as to render his position there impregnable.
On gaining her side Rob found the rail to be quite two feet above
water, instead of only a few inches, as he had supposed. He also found
her to be of great breadth of beam, with wide sweeps of unencumbered
deck, both forward and aft. Safely below the water-line he found roomy,
well-ventilated quarters for officers and crew, as well as ample engine,
coal, and ammunition spaces. He marvelled at her huge guns, polished
until they shone, mounted fore and aft in steel turrets of a strength
and construction to defy the most powerful of modern missiles. At the
same time, these could be revolved at will, by a mechanism so delicate
as to be controlled by a finger. Rob took tiffin with the officers of
the ward-room mess, whom he entertained with news from the States and
from Manila, and when, late in the afternoon, he again was set on shore,
he felt that his first day in Canton, in spite of its clouded beginning,
had been one of the very happiest and most interesting of his life.
That evening Mr. Bishop, whom our lad regarded at once as friend and
employer, found leisure for a long conversation with him, during which
he said:
"As you probably know, one of the most valuable railway concessions in
China, that for a line from this city to Hankow, on the Yang-tse-kiang,
nearly a thousand miles due north from here, has been granted to an
American syndicate. Another concession, for a line from Hankow to Pekin,
was granted a year earlier to the Belgians. These two railways, meeting
at the metropolis of Central China, will form a grand trunk-line,
extending nearly two thousand miles north and south through the
very heart of the empire. The Belgians already are at work on the
construction of their line, while the Americans have made their surveys
and are ready to begin construction. I am an American engineer, employed
by the syndicate, and, as a preliminary step to my further work, I am
about to undertake a journey of investigation from here to Hankow,
and, possibly, on to Pekin. My plans for this journey are so nearly
completed that I could start to-morrow; but I have not as yet secured a
satisfactory interpreter. Will you accept the position? The trip will
be long, and to a certain extent dangerous, but the pay will, I think,
be sufficient to carry you from Shanghai to America after our journey
is completed. What do you say? Are you ready to plunge into the heart
of China, and bury yourself from the world for the next two or three
months, or do you prefer to remain here and look for some easier job?"