A heavy jar followed by a motionless silence awoke the boy at ten
o'clock the next morning. The electric fans were still going and he had
a thick taste in his mouth, but he had hardly time to notice these
things before he dashed up the companionway and out upon the deck. To
starboard the water extended to the horizon, to port a thin line of
brown, a shade deeper in color than the water, marked the bank of the
great river. Alongside helplessly floated a junk with a great gash in
her starboard beam. She was loaded with crockery, and several bales of
blue-and-white rice bowls had tumbled into the water, their contents
bobbing about like a flock of clay pigeons. The boy saw instantly that
owing to the fact that the junk was built in compartments she was in no
danger of sinking, and could easily reach shore. Her captain, a
half-naked man in a straw hat the size of a small umbrella, was
chattering like a monkey at Charley Yen, and a Chinese woman, with a
black-eyed baby of two years or thereabouts, sat idly in the stern
evincing no particular interest in the accident. The man at the wheel
explained that the junk had suddenly tacked. The boy felt in his pocket
and, pulling out a Mexican dollar, tossed it to the junk man, who,
having rubbed it on his sleeve and bitten it, began to chatter anew to
Charley Yen.
"What does he say?" asked the boy.
"He say Captain belong number one man--he mucha tanks," answered Yen
with a grin. What a waste! he added. The fellow had sailed on the feast
day of Sai-Kao because on that day the Likin or native customs were
closed. The gods had punished him. He had no complaint to make and had
made none. As the _Dirigo_ shot ahead the junk man sprang into the water
and began rescuing his rice bowls. They passed no other junk that day,
and the leaden sky did not change its shade. Save for the driving of the
screw they might have been anchored in the midst of a coffee-colored
ocean. Not even a bird relieved the eager search of the eye for relief
from the immeasurable brown. The heat continued intense, and was even
more unbearable than when the sun's rays created a fictitious contrast
of shadow. Early in the afternoon Yen called the boy's attention to a
couple of dolphins which were following them, racing first with the
_Dirigo_ and then with each other. Indeed, they were all three very much
alike, and the majestic sweep and rush of the gray-white sides as they
rose from the water inspired him with a sense of companionship. How far
would they follow, these faithlessly faithful wanderers of the sea? At
sunrise the next morning they picked up Nanking and the river gave more
evidence of life, but they kept on and soon the city and its walls faded
behind them. At noon they passed Wu-hu, at the same hour next day
Kiukiang, and when the boy rose on the morning of the third day out, the
black mass of crowded up-country junks on the water front of Hankow,
swarming like mosquitoes or water flies about a stagnant pool, loomed
into view. The river was full of sampans and fishing boats. The man from
Shan-si, who had not spoken since the night in the cabin, raised his
arm, and pointing to the pagoda repeated majestically to Yen the words
of the ancient Chinese proverb:
"Above is Heaven's Hall,
Below are the cities of Su and Hang."
During the day they passed Kia-yu and Su-ki-kan, and late in the
afternoon swept into sight of Yo-chow. The Shan-si man announced that
Tung-ting was not so very far away. He even volunteered that this was
the greatest country under "Heaven's Hall" for the exportation of
bristles, feathers, fungus, musk, nutgalls, opium, and safflower. The
place presented a crowded, if not particularly ambitious, appearance.
The shore was jammed, as usual, with thousands of junks, and above the
town the muddy banks were lined with Hunan timber and bamboo rafts. From
the bridge of the _Dirigo_ the boy caught from time to time swiftly
shifting views of vast swampy plains, with a ragged line of scattered
distant mountains. Then they passed beyond the bend in the river and
suddenly entered what seemed another ocean, a northwest passage to
Cathay. As far as the eye could reach stretched an illimitable void of
waters, turbid, motionless. A rocky point, some ten feet higher than the
surrounding plain, just gave a foothold for a small temple, a two-story
Ting-tse or pavilion, and a lighthouse shaped like a square paper
lantern. Ten minutes later it was a black spot in their boiling, brown
wake. They were in Tung-ting, that desolate waste of mud, water, and
sandhill islands, half swamp, half lake that rises into being by virtue
of the expanding spring torrents, and sinks into its spongelike alluvial
bed as mysteriously as it comes.
"Whew!" whistled the boy, "I only hope 'Dooley' knows where he's at. I
wish we'd taken on a _lao-ta_ at Hankow. This hole must be a hundred
miles long and it's just about ten feet deep!"
In fact, the quartermaster had already called the boy's attention to the
long grasses that swung idly upon the top of the water, and to the fact
that here and there patches of bottom could be seen.
"Where is Chang-Yuan in all this mess?" he inquired of 'Dooley' who with
Yen occupied a place beside him on the bridge.
The Shan-si pointed to a conical-shaped island several miles distant
which raised itself steeply out of the water, on which the boy could see
through his glasses clung a Chinese village. Flocks of wild fowl
speckled the middle distance with a single lone fisherman on the
starboard bow.
"He says," interrupted Yen, "Sim-wu have got on that island. This place
belong very good for Chinaman--have got plenty of rice. Plenty water
summer time. Winter time water all finish. He says he no think enough
water for this boat. Little more far--about thirty li--have got 'nother
island--after while catchee Chang-Yuan."
"Ask him how fast his bloomin' lake is drying up," directed the boy.
The Shan-si man shrugged his shoulders.
"He says," announced Yen, "if fish belong thirsty they drink water
plenty quick. Fish no thirsty plenty water. Sometime fish drink one foot
water in four days."
The sun, which up to this time had been visible only as a dim circle in
the gray western sky, suddenly broke through with scorching intensity
and at the same moment the _Dirigo_ slid gracefully upon a mudbank, half
turned, and slid gracefully off again. The boy bit his lips and stared
hopelessly at the yellow plain of water all about him. Then he shook his
fist at the Shan-si man.
"Tell him," he roared, "that if we get aground in his infernal lake,
I'll hang him up by the thumbs and cut off his head."
Yen conveyed the message.
"Even so," replied the Shan-si, through the interpreter, "the will of
the Captain is my will and my head is at the Captain's service, but even
the gods cannot prevent the fish from drinking up the lake."