"Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier dog with a black patch
over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right
shoulder?" And every one said, "No, they hadn't," only some had more
polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a
policeman, and he said, "I see one when I was on duty last night, like
what you describe, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young
lad at the other end. The dog didn't seem to go exactly willing."
He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we
went down, not quite so wretched in our insides, because now it seemed
that there was some chance, though we wondered the policeman _could_
have let Pincher go when he saw he didn't want to, but he said it wasn't
his business. And now we asked every one if they'd seen a lad and a
thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch, and cetera.
And one or two people said they had, and we thought it must be the same
the policeman had seen, because they said, too, that the dog didn't seem
to care about going where he was going.
So we went on and through the Park and past the Naval College, and we
didn't even stop to look at that life-sized firm ship in the playground
that the Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and spars on, and
Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have that ship
for his very own.
And we didn't go into the Painted Hall either, because our fond hearts
were with Pincher, and we could not really have enjoyed looking at
Nelson's remains, of the shipwrecks where the drowning people all look
so dry, or even the pictures where young heroes are boarding pirates
from Spain, just as Oswald would do if he had half a chance, with the
pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and Spanish than the pirates
of any nation could manage even if they were not above it. It is an odd
thing, but all those pictures are awfully bad weather--even the ones
that are not shipwrecks. And yet in books the skies are usually a
stainless blue and the sea is a liquid gem when you are engaged in the
avocation of pirate-boarding.
The author is sorry to see that he is not going on with the story.
We walked through Greenwich Hospital and asked there if they have seen
Pincher, because I heard Father say once that dogs are sometimes stolen
and taken to hospitals and never seen again. It is wrong to steal, but I
suppose the hospital doctors forget this because they are so sorry for
the poor ill people, and like to give them dogs to play with them and
amuse them on their beds of anguish. But no one had seen our Pincher,
who seemed to be becoming more dear to our hearts every moment.
When we got through the Hospital grounds--they are big and the buildings
are big, and I like it all because there's so much room everywhere and
nothing niggling--we got down to the terrace over the river, next to the
Trafalgar Hotel. And there was a sailor leaning on the railings, and we
asked him the usual question. It seems that he was asleep, but of course
we did not know, or we would not have disturbed him. He was very angry,
and he swore, and Oswald told the girls to come away; but Alice pulled
away from Oswald and said,
"Oh, don't be so cross. Do tell us if you've seen our dog? He is----"
and she recited Pincher's qualifications.
"Ho yes," said the sailor--he had a red and angry face. "I see 'im a
hour ago 'long of a Chinaman. 'E crossed the river in a open boat. You'd
best look slippy arter 'im." He grinned and spat; he was a detestable
character, I think. "Chinamen puts puppy-dogs in pies. If 'e catches you
three young chaps 'e'll 'ave a pie as'll need a big crust to cover it.
Get along with your cheek!"
So we got along. Of course, we knew that the Chinese are not cannibals,
so we were not frightened by that rot; but we knew, too, that the
Chinese do really eat dogs, as well as rats and birds' nests and other
disgraceful forms of eating.
[Illustration: IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT
KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM.]
H.O. was very tired, and he said his boots hurt him; and Noel was
beginning to look like a young throstle--all eyes and beak. He always
does when he is tired. The others were tired too, but their proud
spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Trafalgar
Hotel's boathouse, and there was a man in slippers, and we said could we
have a boat, and he said he would send a boatman, and would we walk in?
We did, and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with
boats and out on to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a
pier. And there were boats there too, far more than you would think any
one could want; and then a boy came. We said we wanted to go across the
river, and he said, "Where to?"
"To where the Chinamen live," said Alice.
"You can go to Millwall if you want to," he said, beginning to put oars
into the boat.
"Are there any Chinese people there?" Alice asked.
And the boy replied, "I dunno." He added that he supposed we could pay
for the boat.
By a fortunate accident--I think Father had rather wanted to make up to
us for our martyr-like enduring when our cousin was with us--we were
fairly flush of chink. Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to produce
handfuls of money; it was mostly copper, but it did not fail of its
effect.
The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped
the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a
sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see
the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not
like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I
can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When
we were about half-way over, Noel pulled Alice's sleeve and said--
"Do I look very green?"
"You do rather, dear," she said kindly.
"I feel much greener than I look," said Noel. And later on he was not at
all well.
The boy laughed, but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you
half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the
swishing, lumpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer
that went by. Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others were very
silent. Dicky says he saw everything that Oswald saw, but I am not sure.
There were wharves and engines, and great rusty cranes swinging giant's
handfuls of iron rails about in the air, and once we passed a ship that
was being broken up. All the wood was gone, and they were taking away
her plates, and the red rust was running from her and colouring the
water all round; it looked as though she was bleeding to death. I
suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her, but I did. I thought how
beastly it was that she would never go to sea again, where the waves are
clean and green, even if no rougher than the black waves now raging
around our staunch little bark. I never knew before what lots of kinds
of ships there can be, and I think I could have gone on and on for ever
and ever looking at the shapes of things and the colours they were, and
dreaming about being a pirate, and things like that, but we had come
some way; and now Alice said--
"Oswald, I think Noel will die if we don't make land soon."
And indeed he had been rather bad for some time, only I thought it was
kinder to take no notice.
So our ship was steered among other pirate craft, and moored at a
landing-place where there were steps up.
Noel was now so ill that we felt we could not take him on a Chinese
hunt, and H.O. had sneaked his boots off in the boat, and he said they
hurt him too much to put them on again; so it was arranged that those
two should sit on a dry corner of the steps and wait, and Dora said she
would stay with them.
"I think we ought to go home," she said. "I'm quite sure Father wouldn't
like us being in these wild, savage places. The police ought to find
Pincher."
But the others weren't going to surrender like that, especially as Dora
had actually had the sense to bring a bag of biscuits, which all, except
Noel, were now eating.
"Perhaps they ought, but they _won't_," said Dicky. "I'm boiling hot.
I'll leave you my overcoat in case you're cold."
Oswald had been just about to make the same manly proposal, though he
was not extra warm. So they left their coats, and, with Alice, who would
come though told not to, they climbed the steps, and went along a narrow
passage and started boldly on the Chinese hunt. It was a strange sort of
place over the river; all the streets were narrow, and the houses and
the pavements and the people's clothes and the mud in the road all
seemed the same sort of dull colour--a sort of brown-grey it was.
All the house doors were open, and you could see that the insides of the
houses were the same colour as the outsides. Some of the women had blue,
or violet or red shawls, and they sat on the doorsteps and combed their
children's hair, and shouted things to each other across the street.
They seemed very much struck by the appearance of the three travellers,
and some of the things they said were not pretty.
That was the day when Oswald found out a thing that has often been of
use to him in after-life. However rudely poor people stare at you they
become all right instantly if you ask them something. I think they don't
hate you so much when they've done something for you, if it's only to
tell you the time or the way.
[Illustration: WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO
THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN.]
So we got on very well, but it does not make me comfortable to see
people so poor and we have such a jolly house. People in books feel
this, and I know it is right to feel it, but I hate the feeling all the
same. And it is worse when the people are nice to you.
And we asked and asked and asked, but nobody had seen a dog or a
Chinaman, and I began to think all was indeed lost, and you can't go on
biscuits all day, when we went round a corner rather fast, and came slap
into the largest woman I have ever seen. She must have been yards and
yards round, and before she had time to be in the rage that we saw she
was getting into, Alice said--
"Oh, I beg your pardon! I _am_ so sorry, but we really didn't mean to! I
_do_ so hope we didn't hurt you!"
We saw the growing rage fade away, and she said, as soon as she got her
fat breath--
"No 'arm done, my little dear. An' w'ere are you off to in such a
'urry?"
So we told her all about it. She was quite friendly, although so stout,
and she said we oughtn't to be gallivanting about all on our own. We
told her we were all right, though I own Oswald was glad that in the
hurry of departing Alice hadn't had time to find anything
smarter-looking to wear than her garden coat and grey Tam, which had
been regretted by some earlier in the day.
"Well," said the woman, "if you go along this 'ere turning as far as
ever you can go, and then take the first to the right and bear round to
the left, and take the second to the right again, and go down the alley
between the stumps, you'll come to Rose Gardens. There's often Chinamen
about there. And if you come along this way as you come back, keep your
eye open for me, and I'll arks some young chaps as I know as is
interested like in dogs, and perhaps I'll have news for you."
"Thank you very much," Alice said, and the woman asked her to give her a
kiss. Everybody is always wanting to kiss Alice. I can't think why. And
we got her to tell us the way again, and we noticed the name of the
street, and it was Nightingale Street, and the stairs where we had left
the others was Bullamy's Causeway, because we have the true explorer's
instincts, and when you can't blaze your way on trees with your axe, or
lay crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to remember the names
of streets.
So we said goodbye, and went on through the grey-brown streets with
hardly any shops, and those only very small and common, and we got to
the alley all right. It was a narrow place between high blank brown-grey
walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks and tanneries. There was
hardly any one there, but when we got into it we heard feet running
ahead of us, and Oswald said--
"Hullo, suppose that's some one with Pincher, and they've recognized his
long-lost masters and they're making a bolt for it?"
And we all started running as hard as ever we could. There was a turn in
the passage, and when we got round it we saw that the running was
stopping. There were four or five boys in a little crowd round some one
in blue--blue looked such a change after the muddy colour of everything
in that dead Eastern domain--and when we got up, the person the blue was
on was a very wrinkled old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft
felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I see that I ought not to
conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what
we had been looking for. It was indeed a Celestial Chinaman in deep
difficulties with these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards, truly
fiends in mortal shape. They were laughing at the old Chinaman, and
shouting to each other, and their language was of that kind that I was
sorry we had got Alice with us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she
was so angry she did not know what they were saying.
"Pull his bloomin' pigtail," said one of these outcasts from decent
conduct.
The old man was trying to keep them off with both hands, but the hands
were very wrinkled and trembly.
Oswald is grateful to his good Father who taught him and Dicky the
proper way to put their hands up. If it had not been for that, Oswald
does not know what on earth would have happened, for the outcasts were
five to our two, because no one could have expected Alice to do what
she did.
[Illustration: IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.]
Before Oswald had even got his hands into the position required by the
noble art of self-defence, she had slapped the largest boy on the face
as hard as ever she could--and she can slap pretty hard, as Oswald knows
but too well--and she had taken the second-sized boy and was shaking him
before Dicky could get his left in on the eye of the slapped assailant
of the aged denizen of the Flowery East. The other three went for
Oswald, but three to one is nothing to one who has hopes of being a
pirate in his spare time when he grows up.
In an instant the five were on us. Dicky and I got in some good ones,
and though Oswald cannot approve of my sister being in a street fight,
he must own she was very quick and useful in pulling ears and twisting
arms and slapping and pinching. But she had quite forgotten how to hit
out from the shoulder like I have often shown her.
The battle raged, and Alice often turned the tide of it by a well-timed
shove or nip. The aged Eastern leaned against the wall, panting and
holding his blue heart with his yellow hand. Oswald had got a boy down,
and was kneeling on him, and Alice was trying to pull off two other boys
who had fallen on top of the fray, while Dicky was letting the fifth
have it, when there was a flash of blue and another Chinaman dashed into
the tournament. Fortunately this one was not old, and with a few
well-directed, if foreign looking, blows he finished the work so ably
begun by the brave Bastables, and next moment the five loathsome and
youthful aggressors were bolting down the passage. Oswald and Dicky were
trying to get their breath and find out exactly where they were hurt and
how much, and Alice had burst out crying and was howling as though she
would never stop. That is the worst of girls--they never can keep
anything up. Any brave act they may suddenly do, when for a moment they
forget that they have not the honour to be boys, is almost instantly
made into contemptibility by a sudden attack of crybabyishness. But I
will say no more: for she did strike the first blow, after all, and it
did turn out that the boys had scratched her wrist and kicked her shins.
These things make girls cry.
The venerable stranger from distant shores said a good deal to the other
in what I suppose was the language used in China. It all sounded like
"hung" and "li" and "chi," and then the other turned to us and said--
"Nicee lilly girlee, same piecee flowelee, you takee my head to walkee
on. This is alle samee my father first chop ancestor. Dirty white devils
makee him hurt. You come alongee fightee ploper. Me likee you welly
muchee."
Alice was crying too much to answer, especially as she could not find
her handkerchief. I gave her mine, and then she was able to say that
she did not want to walk on anybody's head, and she wanted to go home.
"This not nicee place for lillee whitee girlee," said the young
Chinaman. His pigtail was thicker than his father's and black right up
to the top. The old man's was grey at the beginning, but lower down it
was black, because that part of it was not hair at all, but black
threads and ribbons and odds and ends of trimmings, and towards the end
both pigtails were greenish.
"Me lun backee takee him safee," the younger of the Eastern adventurers
went on, pointing to his father. "Then me makee walkee all alonk you,
takee you back same placee you comee from. Little white devils waitee
for you on ce load. You comee with? Not? Lillee girlee not cly. John
givee her one piecee pletty-pletty. Come makee talkee with the House
Lady."
I believe this is about what he said, and we understood that he wanted
us to come and see his mother, and that he would give Alice something
pretty, and then see us safe out of the horrible brown-grey country.
So we agreed to go with them, for we knew those five boys would be
waiting for us on the way back, most likely with strong reinforcements.
Alice stopped crying the minute she could--I must say she is better than
Dora in that way--and we followed the Chinamen, who walked in single
file like Indians, so we did the same, and talked to each other over our
shoulders. Our grateful Oriental friends led us through a good many
streets, and suddenly opened a door with a key, pulled us in, and shut
the door. Dick thought of the kidnapping of Florence Dombey and good
Mrs. Brown, but Oswald had no such unnoble thoughts.
[Illustration: ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.]
The room was small, and very, very odd. It was very dirty too, but
perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at
one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the
cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and
army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the
young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of
it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa,
without any arms or legs, and a table that was like a box, with another
box in front of it for you to sit down on when you worked, and on the
table were all sorts of tiny little tools--awls and brads they looked
like--and pipe-stems and broken bowls of pipes and mouthpieces, for our
rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by trade. There wasn't much else in
the room except the smell, and that seemed to fill it choke-full. The
smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it--glue and gunpowder, and
white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it was not so easy to breathe as
plain air.
Then a Chinese lady came in. She had green-grey trousers, shiny like
varnish, and a blue gown, and her hair was pulled back very tight, and
twisted into a little knob at the back.
She wanted to go down on the floor before Alice, but we wouldn't let
her. Then she said a great many things that we feel sure were very nice,
only they were in Chinese, so we could not tell what they were.
And the Chinaman said that his mother also wanted Alice to walk on her
head--not Alice's own, of course, but the mother's.
I wished we had stayed longer, and tried harder to understand what they
said, because it was an adventure, take it how you like, that we're not
likely to look upon the like of again. Only we were too flustered to see
this.
We said, "Don't mention it," and things like that; and when Dicky said,
"I think we ought to be going," Oswald said so too.
Then they all began talking Chinese like mad, and the Chinese lady came
back and suddenly gave Alice a parrot.
It was red and green, with a very long tail, and as tame as any pet fawn
I ever read about. It walked up her arm and round her neck, and stroked
her face with its beak. And it did not bite Oswald or Alice, or even
Dicky, though they could not be sure at first that it was not going to.
We said all the polite things we could, and the old lady made thousands
of hurried Chinese replies, and repeated many times, "All litey, John,"
which seemed to be all the English she knew.
We never had so much fuss made over us in all our lives. I think it was
that that upset our calmness, and seemed to put us into a sort of silly
dream that made us not see what idiots we were to hurry off from scenes
we should never again behold. So we went. And the youthful Celestial saw
us safely to the top of Bullamy's Stairs, and left us there with the
parrot and floods of words that seemed all to end in double "e."
We wanted to show him to the others, but he would not come, so we
rejoined our anxious relations without him.
The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first because they were most
frightfully sick at us having been such an age away; but when we let
them look at the parrot, and told them about the fight, they agreed that
it was not our fault, and we really had been unavoidably detained.
But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm always preaching, but I _don't_
think Father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall."
"I suppose _you'd_ have run away and let the old man be killed," said
Dicky, and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich
again.
We took the tram to Greenwich Station, and then we took a cab home (and
well worth the money, which was all we now had got, except
fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all dog-tired.
And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't found Pincher, in spite of all
our trouble.
Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was angrier than I have ever seen
her. She had been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for
us. But, of course, they had not found us. You ought to make allowances
for what people do when they are anxious, so I forgive her everything,
even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house.
He owns we were rather muddy, owing to the fight.
And when the jaw was over and we were having tea--and there was meat to
it, because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be--we all ate
lots. Even the thought of Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites,
though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!" "I do wish we'd found him,"
and things like that. The parrot walked about among the tea-things as
tame as tame. And just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again
to-morrow and have another try for our faithful hound there was a
scratching at the door, and we rushed--and there was Pincher, perfectly
well and mad with joy to see us.
H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.
"Oh!" he said.