IV

That same evening Captain O’Shea remained in his room at the hotel

until after nine o’clock. For one thing, he wrote a long letter to

Johnny Kent, acquainting that doughty farmer with the encouraging

progress of the enterprise, which promised “to deal out enough trouble

to satisfy any reasonable man.” Then he took his letter of credit from

the leather bill-book and made sundry calculations. After leaving

Inspector Burke he had rambled along the water-front and made random

inquiries concerning charter prices. Freights were low and the river

trade was dull. His funds could stand the strain. Fighting men of the

kind he wanted were cheap and he would ship coolies as stokers and

deck-hands. However, O’Shea was ready to see the thing through if it

took his last penny. What man with blood in him wouldn’t be glad to pay

the price of such a picnic as this?

Having jotted down his estimates of the cost of coal, stores, wages,

arms, and so on, he cocked an eye at the total and said to himself:

“’Tis the first time I ever backed an expedition of me own, and was not

pulling some one else’s irons out of the fire. I feel like the minister

of war of a revolutionary government.”

Gathering up his papers, he was about to restore them to the leather

wallet when he caught sight of the folded sheet containing the great

Chinese character which he had displayed to Inspector Burke. It was

not a thing to be carried about carelessly and perhaps exposed to

view in the course of his business dealings with banks or shops or

shipping agents. Some association with this sinister symbol had cost

poor McDougal his life. And Chinese were to be found everywhere in the

European settlement. With an unusually prudent impulse, Captain O’Shea

thrust the folded paper between the layers of clothing in his trunk and

put the key in his pocket.

The night was young, the air warm and close within doors, and he

felt not in the least like turning in. Strolling through the wide

corridors, he passed into the street and moved idly in the direction

of the Bund, attracted by the music of a band which was playing in

the park near by. The place was like a lovely garden with wide areas

of lawn and a profusion of foliage. The large number of men and women

who walked to and fro or chatted in groups were, for the most part,

English, American, and German; exiles of a fashionable and prosperous

air who appeared to find life in the Far East quite endurable and

success in their commercial enterprises not harassingly difficult.

Captain O’Shea found a seat on a rustic bench and watched the passing

show. Presently he smiled as he descried the incongruous figure of a

wizened little elderly Irishman in a black frock-coat with a rusty tall

hat firmly jammed on the back of his head. In this smart company Paddy

Blake was a fish out of water, but he had lost not a bit of his brisk,

devil-may-care demeanor which dared any one to tread on the tail of the

coat aforesaid. O’Shea hailed him, and he halted to cackle cordially:

“I was lookin’ for ye to drop into me place all day. There was a magnum

on ice and a brace of cold roast Chinese pheasants that ’ud make a king

lick his chops. I had something important to impart to ye in th’ back

room.”

“’Twas about McDougal, no doubt,” said O’Shea. “I found him, and dead

as a mackerel he was.”

“I had the same news this mornin’,” exclaimed Paddy Blake. “One of me

Chinese bar-boys lives in the native city forninst the French Gate. He

was bound home last night whin the body was found, but the likes of him

’ud scuttle away and say nawthin’ to the police.”

“Inspector Burke tells me that you were not too free with information

yourself,” dryly observed O’Shea.

Paddy Blake vehemently thumped his knee with his tall hat and returned:

“Me place has a bad enough reputation, God knows, and the damned

British police is biassed agin me. Would it do me anny good to be

dragged into court as witness in a murder case and th’ inspector makin’

out that the man got drunk on my booze? Which is wrong entirely, for

McDougal was sober when he went off in tow of Captain Spreckels, as ye

well know. But ’tis no use holdin’ post-mortems. Thim Chinese divils

done for McDougal same as he was afraid of. And are ye makin’ anny

headway in the matter of the big red-headed man that I informed ye was

Jim Eldridge, mate of the _Tai Yan_ steamer?”

“I will not find easy weather of it without McDougal,” said O’Shea, who

had no intention of showing his hand to Paddy Blake.

An electric lamp illuminated the path in front of them, but a large

tree cast a shadow past one end of the bench, which was why they did

not sooner perceive a young man who stood scanning the crowd as if he

had nothing more to do than listen to the music. Now he stepped into

the light and was about to move on when he caught sight of the tall

hat of old Paddy Blake. As though recognizing this ancient landmark,

he made a mock pass at it with his lacquered stick and exclaimed in

accents easily familiar:

“Hello, old sport! I was betting you the price of a new hat on the

arrival of the German mail-boat last week. You won, Paddy, but why do

you not wear the new hat?”

O’Shea was surveying the jocular young man with considerable interest.

Here was a type new to him--the dapper, _blasé_, slangy Chinese of

Shanghai, wearing European clothes and manners, ardent patron of the

club and the race-track, and forsaking his countrymen to live in a

foreign-built villa on the Bubbling Well Road. An English tailor

and an English haberdasher had adorned this young man regardless of

expense, but O’Shea surmised that he was something more than a gilded

rounder. He looked quick-witted and efficient and very wise in worldly

knowledge. Moreover, there was an odd quality of respect in the manner

of the unterrified Paddy Blake as he replied to the greeting.

“An’ what’s the good worrd, Charley? Can I do annything at all for ye?

I am waitin’ to buy a hat with your money whin this one wears out. ’Tis

a shame to toss it away. I want ye to know Captain O’Shea, a seafarin’

friend of mine from New York. Captain, this is Misther Charley Tong

Sin, comprador for Jordan, Margetson & Co., an’ the smartest comprador

that ye will find between Tientsin and Singapore, if I do say it to his

face.”

O’Shea shook hands with the affable young man, who laughed and retorted:

“Paddy is a great chap for the blarney, a first-chop jollier, you bet.

We do some business together when my firm wants sailors for its ships.

Sometimes Paddy beats me; not so often I skin him.”

“Listen to him,” chuckled the old man. “If iver I got the best of him

just once, it ’ud make me too proud to live with. Well, I must be

trottin’ along to me own dump. I wandered to th’ park on the chance of

pickin’ up a couple of stray sailors. If ye can be of anny service to

Captain O’Shea I will count it as a favor, Charley. He’s a stranger and

he’s Irish, and he has made a hit with me.”

Paddy Blake departed in great haste, and Charley Tong Sin offered

O’Shea a cigarette from an ornately jewelled case, remarking:

“You are in Shanghai for business or pleasure? It is a bully good town

for fun; not as swift as New York, but not so slow either. I went to

college in America.”

“Which is more than I did,” confessed O’Shea. “Oh, I am just looking

about Shanghai, not to find out how swift the town is, but to invest a

bit of money, maybe. Jordan, Margetson? That is a big shipping house?”

“The same. I am in charge of the native business,” chirruped Charley

Tong Sin. “Anything in the shipping line you want, you come to see me

and I will put you wise. You have done business in these ports before,

captain?”

“No; mostly in the Atlantic trade. I was in the office of your firm

this afternoon, asking some information about a possible charter.”

“Ah, but you did not see me. Too bad,” and the comprador added with

bland self-satisfaction: “It must have been after three o’clock. Then

I am in the club drinking gin cocktails every day until I go home to

dinner. It is my custom. There is no man in Shanghai that does more

business and drinks more gin cocktails, but I do not mix the two

things. I am the wise guy, eh? What tonnage do you want to charter, and

where to?”

“I am not quite ready to say,” replied O’Shea, who preferred to keep

his affairs to himself even when offered the assistance of so capable

an adviser as Charley Tong Sin.

“I beg your pardon. Come to my office when you have made up your mind,

Captain O’Shea. For the sake of the jolly sprees I had in little old

New York, I will see that you are not stung in Shanghai. What do you

say to a drive on the Bubbling Well Road before you go back to your

hotel? My carriage is waiting a little way from here. I came to the

park to meet a friend but he has not arrived.”

The invitation was attractive and the acquaintance of the comprador

worth cultivating. O’Shea accepted with thanks, and presently they

climbed into a very shiny victoria with two Chinese grooms on the box.

The spirited little horses, admirably matched, danced through the

paved streets of the settlement and out into the wider spaces of the

countryside. The shipmaster found pleasure in new places; with him

sight-seeing had never lost its zest, and the Bubbling Well Road was

one of the things that no voyager to the Orient ought to miss. To view

it by night was rather unsatisfactory, but the air was deliciously

sweet and cool, and the handsome embowered residences of merchants and

diplomats and Chinese officials appeared quite magnificent when duskily

discerned by the glimmer of the stars.

“You have seen the native city? No?” said Charley Tong Sin. “It is

very dirty, but picturesque to beat the deuce. What you say? To-morrow

morning I go to have an appointment with His Excellency, the governor,

at his yamen. It is on business. Perhaps you would like to meet me

there and have an audience. It is rather good fun, much red-tape, a big

bunch of officials, and plenty of kow-towing. Not many foreigners have

admittance to him in this way.”

It occurred to Captain O’Shea that he should very much like to learn

what the government of the native city, or the police department

thereof, had discovered in connection with the murder of McDougal.

And to gain an entrance in company with the influential comprador,

himself a Chinese, was to make his inquiries under the most favorable

circumstances.

“I will jump at the chance,” he exclaimed. “A man like me that may do

business in China in a small way should make himself solid with the

powers that be.”

“I am sorry that I cannot meet you at your hotel and take you to the

yamen,” explained Charley Tong Sin, “but to-morrow I must be very

early at my office to make up the accounts of a ship that will sail

for Hankow, and then I will have to hurry into the native city like

the very devil. If you tell your ’rickshaw man to carry you to the

governor’s yamen I will be there and see you at eight o’clock.”

“I can find my way, and many thanks to you,” cordially returned O’Shea.

“The native city is strange water, but no doubt the ’rickshaw pilot

will know his course.”

It was drawing near to midnight when the shiny victoria left Captain

O’Shea at the Astor House and the obliging Charley Tong Sin bade him

adieu. The shipmaster went yawning to his room, agreeably refreshed by

the outing and ready for bed. He was a tidy man by habit, having stowed

himself and his belongings for much of his life in a space no larger

than a respectable closet. Even in a hotel room he left nothing strewn

about.

He had no more than pulled off his coat when he observed that things

were not arranged exactly as he had left them. His eyes noted one

trifle, and this led him to look for others. The Chinese servant had

been in to turn down the bed, leave fresh towels, and pick up burnt

matches and scraps of paper, but something other than this routine

handwork had been busy in the room. His things had been examined

hastily, but with careful endeavor to leave them as they were. Opening

one bureau drawer after another, he found confirmation of this

suspicion. The articles therein had been not so much poked about in

disorder as moved from their places by exploring hands.

If a thief had been in the room he found no booty for his pains, for

there was neither money nor jewelry to be looted. Captain O’Shea

thoughtfully picked up a leather hand-bag which was locked as he had

left it. Inserting the key he looked inside. He had been careful to

slip a box of revolver cartridges into a leather flap-pocket because

the pasteboard covering was broken and they were apt to spill loose

in the bottom of the bag. Evidently it had been ransacked, for the

box of cartridges was not in the pocket, but lodged in a fold of a

rain-coat which half filled the bag. O’Shea whistled softly and moved

straightway to his trunk. This also was locked. Flinging back the lid,

he instantly searched between the layers of clothing for the folded

sheet of heavy paper on which he had drawn with a brush and stencilling

ink the ominous Chinese character that was branded into the back of the

red-haired sailor-man.

The paper was missing. Something had already told him that he should

find it missing. He made no further search, but sat himself down on the

edge of the bed and stared very hard at the blank wall. The night was

as warm as before, but he felt curiously chilly.

“’Tis like as if some one had jammed an icicle into the small of me

back,” he reflected. “I will not cry before I am hurt, but there’s

more to this divertin’ adventure of mine than Johnny Kent and I ever

dreamed of on the farm.”

Certain conclusions were boldly obvious. His real business in China

had been discovered by the same agency which had tried to slay the

red-haired sailor and which had murdered McDougal. The paper had been

stolen because it was a clinching proof of his active interest and

interference, and perhaps also to terrify and intimidate him with the

realization that intelligences, hostile and secret, were spying on him.

It was futile to try to guess how the knowledge of his purpose had

been disclosed. McDougal may have been watched and followed, as O’Shea

had already surmised, and they had been seen talking together in Paddy

Blake’s place. Some listener may have been unseen during the interview

at the headquarters of Inspector Burke.

To make complaint, either to the hotel management or to the police,

that his room had been entered seemed a silly proceeding. To catch this

kind of a thief was as hopeless as chasing a phantom. It was decidedly

unpleasant to think of going to sleep in this room, for as Captain

Michael O’Shea admitted to himself, with a very serious countenance:

“The lad that did that trick is likely to sift in through the key-hole

if he takes the notion and chop the brand into me back after slippin’

the knife into me before I can wake up to find out how dead I am. I

would like to sleep in the same bed with Inspector Burke and a battery

of the Royal Artillery this night, but if I lose me nerve Johnny Kent

will disown me entirely.”

With this he looked over his defences, like a seasoned campaigner,

and assembled the chairs, the crockery, and the large tin bath-tub,

together with the heavier articles of his own kit. Two chairs he

placed against the door, one balanced on top of the other so that if

dislodged they would topple over with a good deal of noise. The cord

of the mosquito canopy he cut in twain, and so ingeniously suspended

tub and crockery just inside the two windows that the wariest intruder

must certainly set in motion a clamorous little avalanche. Then, having

tucked his revolver under the pillow, he prudently commended his soul

to his Maker and composed himself to slumber of a hair-trigger kind.

The night passed without alarm and Captain Michael O’Shea roused

himself out soon after daybreak to smoke three strong Manila cigars

and organize himself as a strategy board, or one might have said that

he was clearing for action. Convinced that the game he played was

a genuinely dangerous one, he was in haste to get afloat where he

belonged. To dodge the wiles of an ambushed foe was not what he liked.

At this kind of warfare the Chinese mind was too nimble for him.

He decided that he would keep the appointment to meet Charley Tong

Sin at the yamen of the governor of the native city. No mischance was

likely to befall him in broad daylight, and, given the opportunity,

he would seek a private interview with that official. This business

despatched, he proposed to show the water-front of Shanghai how

speedily a river steamer could be manned and taken to sea.

Having eaten breakfast early and with good appetite, Captain O’Shea

went out to find a ’rickshaw. Only one of them happened to be standing

in front of the hotel and he had little trouble in making the swarthy,

sturdy fellow in the shafts understand where he wished to go. The

coolie set off at a racing trot, whisking the vehicle along with

amazing ease. The passenger had not outgrown the idea that it was

rather absurd and unfair for an able-bodied person to be pulled along

in this fashion by another man no stronger than himself. Therefore,

he nodded approval when the coolie slackened his gait and yelled at

another stalwart Chinese squatted on the curbstone who picked himself

up and ran behind the ’rickshaw as “push-man,” making a double team of

it.

Moved by two-man power, the light vehicle made a speedy passage through

the British settlement and turned into the French quarter to reach

the nearest gate-way of the native city wall. Soon the order and

cleanliness and modernity of European territory and dominion were left

behind and the ’rickshaw had spun into the swarming, filthy streets of

the immemorial China.

“The River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells can be no worse than this,” said

O’Shea to himself, “and for the love of heaven was there ever such a

mess of people jumbled together?”

No more than eight or ten feet wide, the alleys were crowded with

pedlers and street-merchants selling cakes, fish, pork, vegetables,

porcelain, furs, embroideries, pictures, bamboo pipes, their wares

displayed on little wooden stands or spread upon the rutted flag-stones.

Jostling among them were laden mules, top-heavy wheelbarrows, bawling

coolies sweating beneath the burden of the shoulder-yokes, hordes

of idlers, screaming children, until it was to wonder why traffic

was not wholly blockaded. Into this ruck of humanity, this immense

confusion and noise, the two ’rickshaw men hurled their vehicle like

a projectile. They shouted incessantly, threatening and reviling, nor

tried to pick a way through the press. These who got in their path were

knocked head over heels. Pedlers’ barrows were upset helter-skelter.

The onward course of Captain O’Shea was as destructive as a typhoon.

He yelled at his headlong chargers to slow down. They were likely to

cause a riot. Already a mob was buzzing angrily in their wake and

several missiles were hurled at the ’rickshaw. Captain O’Shea had

the sensations of a man who was being run away with. This brace of

pig-tailed fiends had bolted hell-for-leather. He was of a mind to jump

out and let them go their own gait, but this enlarged baby-carriage

of a ’rickshaw was awkward to disembark from while under way, and he

was reluctant to risk landing upon his head. If he menaced them with

a revolver the mob would be apt to join forces with them against the

foreigner. Still, this might be the peculiar fashion of conveying a

gentleman to the governor’s yamen, and perhaps he had better sit tight

and hold hard until the ship struck a rock.

Presently, however, he observed that several big swarthy men in blue

cotton blouses were running alongside the coolie in the shafts and

holding shouted converse with him. They appeared to be friends of his,

and Captain O’Shea did not like their looks. They were hardier, more

truculent of visage, than the pasty-faced Shanghai coolie class. The

tough has the same ear-marks the world over, and these fellows were

ruffians whom one would not care to meet in the dark.

A few minutes after these had joined company the ’rickshaw turned

abruptly from one of the crowded streets and moved with undiminished

speed into a wider but much less frequented thoroughfare lined with

stables, straw-littered court-yards whose buildings were in ruinous

decay, and hovels used as slaughter-houses where mangy dogs prowled

in search of offal. The ’rickshaw tilted and veered sharply in the

direction of one of these disreputable court-yards, and Captain Michael

O’Shea, quite certain that he was not headed toward the governor’s

yamen, acted decisively and on the spur of the moment.

Things were going all wrong and very probably he would alight from the

frying-pan into the fire, but this was nothing less than an abduction.

The coolie in the shafts had coiled his queue under his cap, possibly

to guard against the very manœuvre that O’Shea executed. But the wind

and the rapid motion had loosed the end of the thick black braid and it

bobbed between his shoulders and whipped free as he ran.

Bending forward, O’Shea clutched the queue in a tremendous grip and

laid back as if he were hauling on a main-sheet. The rascal’s head

was fetched up with a dislocating jerk, his feet pawed the air for an

instant, and his hands lost their hold of the shafts. Then, as he came

down and tried vainly to get a footing, the careering ’rickshaw rammed

him from behind and sent him sprawling on his face. Shot out from his

seat went Captain O’Shea, his feet in front of him, a revolver in his

fist, ready to bound up from the pavement and open the engagement on

the instant.

The “push-man” had been violently poked under the chin by the back

of the suddenly halted ’rickshaw, and he lay groaning and doubled

up several feet away. The ruffianly escort, taken by surprise, ran

a little distance before they could wheel and return to the scene.

Captain O’Shea had a moment in which to get his bearings and take

stock of the situation. Darting for the nearest wall, he braced his

back against it and stood waiting. The big swarthy rascals in the

blue blouses fiercely jabbered together, gazed up and down the almost

deserted street, and with no more delay drew knives from their baggy

breeches and charged with heads down.

O’Shea threw up his revolver for a snap-shot at the foremost of them.

The hammer clicked. There was no report. He pulled the trigger again

with the same result. For the third time the hammer fell with the same

futile, sickening click. This was his finish. The thing was absurd,

incredible. Raging, he grasped the weapon by the barrel and ran

forward to swing the butt against the nearest shaven head. A long knife

ripped at him and slashed his sleeve. He cracked the man’s head, but

the others were at him like wolves. He dodged and tried to take to his

heels, but the two ’rickshaw men blocked his path.

One of the assassins had worked around behind him and was trying to

trip and get him down so that they could cut him to ribbons at their

leisure. The knives hemmed him in. He slipped and fell upon one knee.

The ruffians laughed.

Then, lo and behold! they were scampering frantically away, yelling in

fear, scrambling over walls like monkeys, diving into the stables and

court-yards, flying for the lower end of the street. In a twinkling

Captain O’Shea was alone, magically snatched from death. White and

shaking, he stood and gazed at a near-by corner of the crooked

thoroughfare. Filing past it came a squad of British bluejackets in

white clothes, and the sun winked brightly on the polished metal of

their rifles and cutlasses. Beside the lieutenant, in front of them,

strode a tall, slim-waisted man in khaki uniform whom O’Shea recognized

as Inspector Burke. O’Shea’s assailants had been warned in time to

scurry to cover before the British party had more than a flying glimpse

of them. At a quick order shouted by the lieutenant, the sailors

scattered into the yards and squalid buildings, but the fugitives had

escaped by a dozen dark and devious exits to vanish in the labyrinths

of the teeming, mysterious native city. Inspector Burke was pounding

O’Shea on the back and exclaiming vigorously:

“My word, old chap! What sort of a bally row is this? The beggars

nearly did for you. Lucky we happened along, wasn’t it?”

“Tis all of that,” earnestly replied the shipmaster. “And who are ye,

anyhow? Is this a fairy story or a play right out of the theatre? You

came on the stage about one second before the curtain rung down.”

“Leftenant Kempton-Shaw--ah, here he is--allow me to present him,

Captain O’Shea--as I was about to say, he came ashore from the

_Warspite_ gun-boat this mornin’ with a batch of Chinese pirates, the

real thing, don’t you know. He took them out of a junk after a rather

nice little shindy last week. He marched them to the Chinese prison

just now, it’s in this quarter of the native city, and their heads will

be cut off to-morrow. I’m awfully pleased that we were taking this

short cut home. In close quarters, weren’t you?”

“I have never found them a closer fit,” said O’Shea. “I was on me way

for a chat with the governor, and a gang of bad citizens tried to wipe

me out. I will walk along with you if ye don’t mind. There is enough

Irish in me to waste no great love on the British flag, but I will say,

Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw, that I never laid eyes on a finer, handsomer

lot of men than these lads of yours from the _Warspite_.”

“Thanks, and I fancy you mean it,” smiled the naval officer. “This is

extraordinary, by Jove. Foreigners are fairly safe in the native city,

as a rule, are they not, Burke? What do you make of it?”

“I shall have to hear Captain O’Shea’s report.”

“I have no long-winded report to offer,” incisively declared the

shipmaster. “I have me suspicions, and you can guess what they are,

Inspector Burke. ’Tis the same business that we talked about in your

office. But I wish nothing to do with any police investigations. You

will report this row of mine to the native government, I have no doubt,

and I hope ye will try to collect an indemnity for me distressed

emotions, but I have no time to dilly-dally about in Shanghai. I will

go to sea. Will you help me find the men?”

“From the tone of your voice I infer that your business is not

precisely pacific, my dear sir,” put in Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw. “Do

you mind letting the _Warspites_ in on this cruise of yours?”

“Thank you, but I have set out to handle it as an affair of me own.

I may have bit off more than I can chew, but I will try to see it

through.”

“Meet me at my office at noon and I’ll have some men for you to look

over,” said Inspector Burke. “I will pick up a crew for you if I have

to make a general jail-delivery.”

As they trudged along Captain O’Shea became silent and abstracted. He

was not in a mood for conversation. Conjecture pointed one way. He had

been a gullible fool who deserved to have a knife stuck in his ribs. It

had been as easy to trap him as though he were a lubber on his first

voyage out from home. It had been with design that only one ’rickshaw

stood in front of the hotel that morning when he was ready to go to

the native city. And the pair of coolies were hired cutthroats who had

steered him into the disgusting street among the slaughter-houses in

order that he might be done away with, leaving never a trace of his

fate behind him.

Reasoning back from this link to the next preceding, his room had

been entered and ransacked while he was safely out of the way in a

carriage on the Bubbling Well Road. Some time had been required to

make that careful examination and fit keys to his hand-bag and trunk.

Also, he had just now investigated his revolver and discovered that

the firing-pin of the hammer had been filed, not enough for the eye to

notice it, but sufficiently to cause the impact to fail to explode the

primer of the cartridge.

The affable, gilded young gentleman who had invited him to drive on the

Bubbling Well Road was the same kind acquaintance who had suggested

that he take a ’rickshaw and visit the native city in the morning. The

finger of coincidence pointed in the direction of that smartest of

compradores, Charley Tong Sin.

“That kind of coincidence is unhealthier than the cholera,” said O’Shea

to himself. “Maybe this sport with the college education and the taste

for gin cocktails is a good friend of mine, but I will give him no

chance to prove it again. I have been on the jump ever since I met him.

If he is not crooked he is a hoodoo. And ’tis not impossible, after

all, that he is mixed up with this gang of murderers that I am running

after. The heart of him is Chinese.”

He would keep these suspicions to himself. They lacked tangible proof,

and he held to the view that the business was entirely his own. He

had plunged into this befogged maze of circumstances like a boy on a

holiday, and it was for him to extricate himself like a man. With the

warmest expressions of gratitude he parted from Inspector Burke and the

naval lieutenant, and hastened in the direction of the water-front.

Less than an hour later he was inspecting a light-draught steamer

called the _Whang Ho_ owned by the China Navigation Company. She was

old, sadly in need of repairs, and about as sea-worthy for rough

weather as a packing-box. But O’Shea felt confident that she could

be nursed along to serve his purpose, and the larger, better vessels

available for charter at short notice were not so handy for exploring

muddy rivers and strange corners. Having put to sea at one time and

another in craft which were held together only by their paint, Captain

O’Shea asked no more of the _Whang Ho_ than that her engines should

turn over. He dared not examine the machinery too closely lest he might

lose confidence in his steamer, but the owners’ agent assured him that

she was fit for service and he took his word for it.

“Start her fires going at once,” said O’Shea, “and if enough pressure

shows on the gauges to turn her wheel as she lies at her moorings, I

will sign the charter-party and insurance papers and slap down the two

thousand dollars for a month’s use of the venerable relic.”

“That is fair enough,” replied the agent. “And it is as good as done.

You can go ahead with getting your supplies, Captain O’Shea. I take it

that you want to do a bit of exploration work for one of the American

syndicates? We have done quite a lot of business with your people and

their concessions.”

“It may be something like that,” briefly returned O’Shea. “And now will

you be kind enough to tell me where to order a hundred and fifty tons

of steam coal to be put in the bunkers this very day?”

“Our company will be pleased to let you have it, and I can guarantee

prompt delivery from lighters alongside the steamer. Or I presume that

Jordan, Margetson will do the same for you.”

“I think I will not deal with Jordan, Margetson,” and O’Shea’s voice

was smooth and pleasant. “The comprador is a very able young man.”

“Charley Tong Sin? Well, rather. A smart chap, that.”

“Yes, very. I wish I could keep my razor as sharp.”

Captain O’Shea next visited a ship-chandler’s and submitted his list of

stores, making it a condition of payment that the stuff should be in

the steamer before sunset. The elderly German who served him had the

tact and discretion bred of long experience with the seafarers of the

unexpected Orient. It was his business to sell them whatever they might

want, to take his profit and ask no questions. Yes, he could find

thirty service rifles and revolvers, also cutlasses of the best steel.

They were of patterns discarded by a certain European government, but

excellent weapons. He would be glad to sell the captain one, five,

or ten thousand of them. The captain was not a man to wag a foolish

tongue; one could see it at a glance.

“You and I might do business some day,” quoth O’Shea, “but I am too

busy to start a revolution at present.”

He sent a note to Paddy Blake asking him to find a dozen Chinese

firemen and sailors and a river pilot, and to muster them ready for

signing articles in the afternoon. He believed the old Irishman to be a

ripened scoundrel at his own trade, but suspected him of no complicity

in the manœuvres of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador had merely used

Paddy Blake as a means of making the acquaintance of Captain O’Shea.

Five minutes after noon the shipmaster (he had taken a decided dislike

to riding in ’rickshaws) trudged into the headquarters building of

Inspector Burke.

“I have a choice collection for you to look over,” said the latter.

“They are waiting in another room, and I should call them a worried

lot. I sent my men out to pick them up, do you see, and they have not

been told the reason why.”

“I cannot afford to be particular, Inspector Burke. Let me at them and

I will see whether I am safer ashore among the Chinese or at sea with

your exhibit of beach-combers.”

“Oh, they are not as bad as that,” the inspector assured him. “I

should scarcely call them desperate characters. However, while I wish

you the best of luck, old chap, I shall shed never a tear if you lose

your shipmates somewhere beyond Shanghai. Let us call them soldiers of

misfortune, if you like.”

He led the way into the large drill-room, where a score or more of men

stood in uneasy attitudes and appeared not at all comfortable in this

environment. O’Shea let his glance rove in swift, appraising scrutiny

and smiled to himself as he recognized one familiar type after another.

He had recruited such men as these for unostentatious ventures in the

waters of the Spanish Main. Here was the red-faced, burly shipmaster

ready with a glib speech and fluent curses to explain how he happened

to be without his papers; the shambling ne’er-do-well with the slack

mouth and the weak chin who had fled from a scrape at home to lose

himself in foreign ports; the tanned adventurer, brave and resourceful,

who was fit for nothing else than the life of a rover; the battered old

seaman, worn out by the hardships of the forecastle, who had been cast

adrift from the hospital; the cashiered army officer with the hall-mark

of his caste blurred but still visible; the sharp-featured young man

with the furtive eye who lived by his wits and found it very hard

living indeed; the bleary tropical tramp who would sell his soul for a

drink of brandy.

These and the rest of them were seedy in various ways. They conveyed

a sense of failure, of having lost their grip. Their clothes did not

signify this so much as what life had written in their faces. Several,

in fact, were dressed in clean white duck and linen. They were fighting

hard to preserve the guise of self-respect. And yet every man of them

had marched to police headquarters at a word from Inspector Burke with

the sick fear in his heart that his past had overtaken him, or that he

was to be deported for the good of the community, or that he was to be

locked up as a vagrant.

Inspector Burke felt pity for them. It was heartless to keep the poor

devils in this painful suspense. With a curt nod he addressed them in

a group, for they had unwittingly drifted together as if finding some

small comfort in solidarity.

“This is not police business,” said he. “I sent for you to oblige my

friend Captain O’Shea. He will explain what he wants, and I advise you

to play square with him and I’m quite sure he will make it worth while.”

At this the company brightened and looked immensely relieved. The

hang-dog manner fled. Shoulders were braced, heads held erect. They

were like different men. O’Shea had a less pessimistic opinion of

them. He had already concluded to show no finicky taste by picking and

choosing. He would take them in a lump, good, bad, and indifferent.

Those who were really competent would soon disclose it on shipboard and

they could help him hammer the others into shape.

“My speech to you will be short and sweet,” said he. “I need men for

a voyage coastwise and me steamer will be ready to sail to-night. You

will live well and I expect ye to obey orders. ’Tis not sailors’ work

or I should not take on your kind. The fewer questions ye ask the more

popular ye will be with me. The pay will be at the rate of five dollars

a day gold, but I will give no advances. I want ye to come aboard

sober. If you handle yourselves like men I will pay ye a bonus at the

end of the voyage. Those that want to go will give me their names.”

Not a man hung back or asked a question. They whispered softly among

themselves, as if afraid to make a slip that might break the spell.

Captain O’Shea had one thing more to say and they listened with the

most devout attention.

“I took note of the small Hotel London down by the water-side. ’Tis a

clean, decent place and I have had a word with the landlord. I will

give every man me card. If you show it to him he will be pleased to

entertain ye at dinner at once, and he will hand ye out cigars and

three drinks apiece, no more. And I will meet you there for supper at

six o’clock to-night.”

“Excellent strategy,” murmured Inspector Burke.

“By the way,” cried O’Shea to his pleased followers, “I overlooked

something. I need a chief engineer. Can any one of you qualify?”

It appeared that none of them was sufficiently acquainted with the

internal works of a steamer to pass as an expert, although a young man

of a very Cockney accent thought he might do as an assistant.

Inspector Burke made haste to remark:

“I say, let me give you the very man for the job. Kittridge is his

name. It’s rather awkward, for he is in clink at present, the British

jail. But his time expires to-morrow--he was given thirty days--and I

dare say the magistrate will be willing to sign release papers if I

explain the situation.”

“I am not asking me men for references,” observed O’Shea, “but, as a

matter of mild curiosity, what did ye put this Kittridge away for?”

“He tried to whip my entire Sikh police force, and he made a jolly

good beginning. Then his ship sailed away and left him in quod. He was

engineer in a Cardiff tramp. A very good man, I understand.”

“He sounds like it. His references are most satisfactory, especially

what he did to your turbanned cops,” O’Shea cordially affirmed. “Send

this Kittridge to the Hotel London, if ye please, and give him this

card of mine, and tell him to wait for me there.”

Through the afternoon Captain Michael O’Shea, now master of the aged

river steamer _Whang Ho_, was the busiest and most energetic of men. A

hundred and one things presented themselves as necessary to be done.

When at length he hurried into the Hotel London shortly before the

supper-hour his men were waiting, hopeful, expectant, cheerful, smoking

his cigars and with the three drinks apiece tucked under their belts.

Among them was a lanky, solemn person with a pair of gray side-whiskers

and a leathery complexion crisscrossed by a net-work of fine wrinkles.

His whole appearance was eminently decorous and respectable and he

seemed to have strayed into the wrong company. It was not far-fetched

to conjecture that he might be a missionary from some station in the

Chinese hinterland who had kindly concerned himself with the souls of

this congregation of black sheep.

Captain O’Shea bowed to him with a puzzled, respectful air, at which

the pious stranger remarked:

“Inspector Burke told me to report here and be damn quick about it. I

am Kittridge, and I hear you are wanting an engineer.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Kittridge. I came near mistakin’ you for a sky-pilot.

And so your favorite pastime is beating up Sikh policemen! I have a job

for ye at double the wages you got in your tramp steamer, whatever they

were. Are you willing?”

“I would sign on with the devil himself to get clear of this

blankety-blank pig-hole of a blistering Shanghai,” promptly exclaimed

Mr. Kittridge. “Where’s your ship? Shall I go aboard at once?”

“Please take a look at the engine-room and report to me here. She is

the _Whang Ho_, tied up at the China Navigation Company’s wharf. Don’t

be too critical, but if there’s work that is absolutely necessary I

will send ye machinists to work all night.”

“I know the condemned little hooker by sight,” bitterly quoth Mr.

Kittridge with a tug at his starboard whisker. “Very well, sir. I will

take a squint at her and make out my list of engine-room stores. Can

you get them to-night?”

“The ship-chandler is waiting to hear from me, and I have sent word to

the machine-shop,” briefly answered O’Shea.

Paddy Blake had very promptly raked up the required number of Chinese

hands and was ready to deliver them on board whenever required. To the

Hotel London he came, towing by the arm a most extraordinarily bent and

shrivelled anatomy with a wisp of a white queue, whom he turned over to

Captain O’Shea with the explanation:

“Here is a river and coastwise pilot for ye that is as wise as

Confucius. And by the same token, I have no doubt that he was once

pilot aboard the junk of that grand old philosopher himself. Or maybe

he was shipmates with Noah.”

The ancient mariner croaked a phrase or two in a grating, rusty voice,

and O’Shea dubiously observed:

“If he talks no English at all how will I tell him where I want to go?”

“I have sent ye a Chinese bos’n that can sling th’ pidgin,” said Paddy

Blake. “Dearly would I love to know where ye are bound and what bobbery

ye are up to, Captain Mike O’Shea, but a man in my business has learned

to ask no more silly questions than he can help.”

“Keep that magnum on ice till I come back to Shanghai and I will spin

ye the yarn in the little back room of yours, Paddy.”

“May ye come back right side up,” warmly exclaimed the old man. “By

th’ look of the friends ye have mustered to go wid you, I wud say

that ye are bound out on what th’ Shanghai diplomats call a policy of

binivolint assimilation.”

The report of the aggrieved Mr. Kittridge was to the effect that while

the engines of the _Whang Ho_ would probably take her to sea without

breaking down, a night’s work on the condenser, not to mention a leaky

cylinder, would considerably improve her health. Captain O’Shea told

him to drive ahead with these repairs; nor was the delay worth fretting

about. Things had gone amazingly well thus far and the _Whang Ho_ would

be ready to sail in the morning. He had no desire to spend another

night ashore, and he would take his company on board at once, assign

them to quarters, and make a tentative organization for sea duty.

The _Whang Ho_ had been fitted for passenger service on the Yang-tse,

and there were state-rooms on the upper deck to hold twice the number

of O’Shea’s recruits. In the Chinese draft sent aboard by Paddy Blake

were a cook and a steward trained to their business, and they put

things to rights in their quiet, deft way. The mood of Captain O’Shea

became normally cheerful and confident. He had a deck under his feet,

his word was law, and it was good to hear the lap of salt water and the

swirl of the tide against a vessel’s side.

He was awake and about until midnight. The work in the engine-room was

progressing rapidly under the vehement direction of Mr. Kittridge.

Feeling the need of sleep, for the preceding night had been a broken

one, Captain O’Shea set a watch in charge of the burly shipmaster of

his company whom he appointed first mate and went to his bunk in the

cabin just abaft the wheel-house. At three o’clock Mr. Kittridge,

very hot and grimy, rapped on the door and gruffly announced that the

machinists had gone ashore and he proposed to turn in and sleep until

sailing-time.

At six o’clock Captain O’Shea went on deck in his pajamas to order the

steward to fetch him a cup of coffee. He saw no reason why the steamer

should not get under way at once. The Chinese steward came not at his

call and he betook himself to the galley. A fire was burning in the

range, rice and potatoes were cooking in the pots, bacon sliced on the

table ready for frying, but there was no cook. O’Shea looked puzzled

and started for the forecastle. On the way he met his first mate whose

demeanor was distressed and excited.

“I was about to call you, sir,” he exclaimed, his red face working with

emotion. “You will think I’ve made a hash of my first night on duty,

but this insane business happened like a shot out of a gun, sir. Not

ten minutes ago the Chinamen, every last one of ’em, came boiling on

deck and went over the side to the wharf like so many rats. And they

never did stop running. They were scared; it was a panic; but they

didn’t stop to jabber. They just flew, and most of ’em left their

dunnage behind.”

“The divil you say,” muttered O’Shea, and he rubbed his head in

slightly bewildered fashion. “That must have been just before I stepped

on deck, Mr. Parkinson. And ye have no idea at all what it was about?”

“Not the slightest, sir. I hope you don’t blame me. I’d have sailed

into the thick of them with my fists, but it was like chasing so many

greased pigs. They vanished before you could more than wink.”

“What about the fires?” snapped the captain. “Have you been below?”

“Yes, sir. The first thing I did was to find Mr. Kittridge. He is in

the engine-room, and he told me to send down half a dozen of our white

men to keep up steam.”

“Good enough! Now sing out for a volunteer cook, and I will investigate

this comical performance. Did anybody get aboard to talk to these

Chinamen?”

“Not a soul, sir. I’m sure of it. I had a reliable man at the gangway,

and another on the wharf.”

“I believe you. While I look around a bit, get the ship ready to go

to sea, Mr. Parkinson. ’Tis not in me mind to be hung up in port very

long.”

A sailing junk was attempting to reach with the morning breeze across

the wide stretch of river. Hauling close to the wharf at which the

_Whang Ho_ was moored, the junk attempted to come about, but missed

stays in lubberly fashion and hung in the wind as she slowly drifted

past the steamer’s stern. The Chinese who clung to the long tiller,

and the others who stood upon the poop or hauled on the cordage, were

gazing with signs of excitement at the _Whang Ho_. Several of them

gesticulated, and their fingers were aimed at the rounded, overhanging

stern of Captain O’Shea’s vessel. He caught sight of those antics and

walked aft.

There was no good reason why the crew of the passing junk should

make such a fuss over this commonplace river steamer. Their singular

interest in her might be worth trying to fathom. Without delaying to

seek the gangway, he threw his leg around a tautened hawser and slid

down to the wharf. Running out to the end of it, he commanded a clear

view of the stern of the _Whang Ho_. Upon the white woodwork, just

above the counter, was painted in broad strokes of bright vermilion the

sprawling Chinese character which had been gashed in the back of the

sailor named Jim Eldridge.

Captain O’Shea hastily returned on board and climbed over the after

rail, belaying a loose end of heaving-line and resting his foot in the

loop so that he was able to let himself down until he could touch the

uppermost smear of vermilion paint. It rubbed off on his hand, fresh

and wet, and must have been applied during the night. His Chinese crew

had discovered it there. Perhaps some one had sung out the information

from a passing junk or sampan. At any rate, this was what had made them

quit the steamer. A charge of dynamite could have made their exodus

no more expeditious. The word had flown from mouth to mouth, and they

fled from the ship as from the plague. Even the incredibly aged pilot

had hobbled away with the rest of them, fear restoring an agility long

since departed.

“The hoodoo again!” reflectively exclaimed O’Shea. “I thought I had got

clear of it. ’Tis not so much to frighten me this time as to delay the

voyage. Somebody is anxious to send word up the coast ahead of me to

let some one else know I am coming. That is a guess, and ’tis as good

as the next one.”

He would find Paddy Blake at once and discuss the matter with him.

Perhaps he could ship another crew and leave port before the news had

time to spread among the Chinese seafarers. Telling Mr. Parkinson to

see to it that the vermilion paint was instantly removed, he set out

on foot along the water-front. At this early hour, there was no stir

of business among the foreign shipping-houses. Passing a substantial

brick building, Captain O’Shea’s eye was held for an instant by the

brass sign on one of the doors, “Jordan, Margetson & Co.” He happened

to be thinking quite assiduously just then of the courteous comprador,

Charley Tong Sin. He halted and stared hard at the door in front of him

which was ajar.

It was too early for any of the clerks to be about. With an impulse

which had no definite purpose behind it, Captain O’Shea pushed open

the door and quietly stepped into the hallway and thence into the

main office with its row of desks. The room was empty, and he moved

in the direction of the smaller, detached offices in the rear, still

treading softly. Yes, the shrewd and zealous comprador, so faithful to

his employers’ interests, was already at work. When the visitor caught

sight of him he was bending over a table littered with papers, intent

on arranging and filing them. Possibly his ears were as quick as his

wits and he had heard Captain O’Shea before seeing him. Unruffled and

smiling, with an air of delighted surprise, the comprador exclaimed,

advancing with hand outstretched:

“How glad I am to see you again! The top of the morning! Were you

looking to find me? Ah, I am the early bird, you bet.”

“I expected to sail by now, but there has been a bit of trouble with me

native crew,” replied the shipmaster, wary as a hawk. “I saw your place

was open and I dropped in on the chance of bidding ye farewell. You

mentioned the other night that you sometimes came down early.”

“That is the deuce of my business, Captain,” easily returned Charley

Tong Sin. “Trouble with your crew? Can I help you? Do you need men? I

am sorry you didn’t come to me in the first place.”

“I wish I had. ’Twas old Paddy Blake I first turned to as one Irishman

to another. And maybe I was wrong in not asking your advice about the

steamer.”

If this were a fencing-match, then O’Shea had scored the first point.

His bold, ingenuous features expressed not the slightest change of

emotion, but in an instant he had discovered that which clinched

and drove home his suspicions of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador put

a fresh cigarette to his lips and held a lighted match between his

fingers, unaware that the flare conveyed a fleeting translucence.

Underneath the beautifully polished nails of his thumb and forefinger

there showed a line of vermilion which the most careful scrubbing had

failed to eradicate. It was the color of the paint which had been

smeared on the stern of the _Whang Ho_ in the form of a sprawling

Chinese character.

The luck of Captain Michael O’Shea so ordered it that he should observe

this phenomenon before the flare of the match died out. Thereupon he

lied swiftly and plausibly, the purpose hot in his heart to find a

pretext that should coax the comprador to accompany him on board the

_Whang Ho_. To a sympathetic query Captain O’Shea smoothly made answer:

“I am the kind of a man that will own up to his own mistakes. I thought

I could go it alone when I ought to have been glad and thankful for

the help of a man like yourself. Between us, I am not anxious to go to

sea in this old tub that I have chartered from the China Navigation

Company. And now that I am delayed for lack of a crew, maybe you can

show me a way to slip out of the bargain. My chief engineer finds the

vessel is not at all what she was represented to be. I took her subject

to certain conditions and she cannot make good.”

“I told you you would be stung in Shanghai without me,” laughed Charley

Tong Sin in the greatest good-humor. “Better chuck up the _Whang Ho_

and let me find you a steamer.”

“That I will do, and gladly,” affirmed O’Shea. “Have ye time to step

aboard with me now and I will show you how I have been buncoed. Then ye

can advise me how to break the charter. I have a good case.”

“Of course I will,” cried the comprador. “Pooh, we will bluff the China

Navigation Company out of its boots. I will make them look like thirty

cents.”

“You are the smartest comprador between Tientsin and Singapore,

according to Paddy Blake, and I have no doubt of it,” sweetly murmured

Captain O’Shea.

“That’s what everybody says,” affably rejoined Charley Tong Sin as they

walked into the street. “What is the trouble with your crew?”

“You can search me. I cannot find out for the life of me. They up and

jumped ship without warning.”

“I will get more men for you. Leave it to me. You have come to the

right place this time, Captain O’Shea.”

Chatting amiably, the twain came to the wharf and climbed the gangway

of the _Whang Ho_. That anxious first mate, Mr. Parkinson, pitiably

afraid lest he lose his billet and be turned adrift because he had

failed to prevent the desertion of the crew, brightened perceptibly at

sight of Charley Tong Sin and concluded that this influential young man

had been persuaded to mend the troubles.

“Come to my room, if ye please,” said Captain O’Shea to the smiling

comprador, “and I will summon my chief engineer. He will tell you that

the steamer is not fit to make three knots an hour, and then we will go

below.”

The shipmaster beckoned Mr. Parkinson to follow. The trio were passing

through the wide hall of the main cabin when Captain O’Shea halted.

Swinging on his heel, he stood facing Charley Tong Sin, who started

slightly, for the visage of Captain O’Shea was stern and lowering.

What followed was instantaneous. The shipmaster’s fist shot out and

collided with the jaw of the comprador, who measured his length on the

floor and appeared to be wrapped in slumber. Only the toes of his neat

patent-leather shoes oscillated gently. The expression of his face was

singularly peaceful. The oblique eyelids were closed.

The aghast Mr. Parkinson sputtered in great dismay:

“My God, sir, what have you done? We’ll all go to jail for this. This

is Jordan, Margetson’s right-hand man.”

“I have given him a sleeping-powder,” said O’Shea. “Take him by the

heels while I carry the other end of him and we will lock him in a

spare state-room. Put a guard over him. If he squeals, hit him again

and keep him quiet.”

The mate was about to renew his protests, but his voice died in his

throat. Perceiving that he wavered miserably, Captain O’Shea spoke once

more, and his accents were hard:

“You can make your choice, Mr. Parkinson. Ye sail with me and you play

my game or you can go ashore to rot and starve on the beach, same as

when I picked ye out of the gutter. I have given this dirty young

Chinese blackguard a taste of what is coming to him. Will ye fall to or

shall I kick you out of the ship?”

“I--I will take your orders, sir,” stammered the other.

“Then help me get this steamer to sea. We will wait for no more Chinese

sailors. Muster all hands on the upper deck.”

They came piling up from the hold and the dining-room abaft the galley,

where most of them had been at breakfast. The inanimate comprador was

no longer visible.

“Will you sail with me at once or lose the chance of making the

voyage?” demanded O’Shea. “Some of you will have to shovel coal and

others wash dishes and do seamen’s duty on deck. But I will pay ye

extra for it, and we will take this old box of a steamer to where we

want to go.”

The response was hearty and unanimous. The adventurers could think of

no worse fate than to be once more stranded in Shanghai. They were well

fed, they had slept in clean beds again, and their employer was a man

who could be trusted to deal with them fairly. With a spirited cheer

they scattered to their various stations. The chief engineer spoke

briefly, his gray whiskers standing out in the morning breeze:

“Nobody but a wild Irishman would have the nerve to take this painted

coffin to sea with a gang of misbegotten greenhorns to man her. I have

steam enough to give her steerage-way whenever you’re ready to cast

off, Captain O’Shea.”

“Then let go, fore and aft,” roared the master. “Are ye pilot enough to

take her down the river, Mr. Parkinson?”

“I could do it with both eyes shut, but I’m not so familiar with the

coast to the north’ard.”

“I have a pilot for the part of the coast and the river we are bound

for,” grimly returned O’Shea. “He is locked in a spare state-room just

now. He will know that part of China very well, for ’tis me opinion

that he has been there before.”

V

Over a mournful, muddy expanse of the China Sea wallowed a top-heavy

river steamer whose engines raised protesting clamor like an assemblage

of threshing-machines. The gods of the air and water were in a kindly

mood or else she would have opened up and foundered ere now. In the

spray-swept wheel-house stood Captain Michael O’Shea, swaying easily

to the crazy roll and lurch of the _Whang Ho_ and scanning the low dim

coast with a pair of glasses. Clinging to the window ledge beside him

was a young man of a Chinese countenance whose raiment, the handiwork

of a fashionable British tailor, was sadly rumpled and soiled. The

whole aspect of the young man was rumpled, in fact, not to say

excessively forlorn, and now and then he pressed his hand against a

painful jaw. It was difficult to imagine that he had been an ornament

of clubs, a pattern for the gilded youth, and the smartest comprador

between Tientsin and Singapore.

The plight of Charley Tong Sin was made poignantly distressing by the

fact that in the process of acquiring the vices of the Occident he

had lost his grip on the essential virtues of the Orient. His native

stoicism had been sapped and the fatalistic attitude of mind which

meets death without so much as the flutter of an eyelid was eaten with

dry-rot. In other words, the comprador was willing to pay any price to

save his own skin, although his father before him would have suffered

himself to be sliced to death by inches sooner than “lose face” in the

presence of a foreigner.

Captain Michael O’Shea’s method of extracting information from this

kidnapped passenger had been brutally simple and direct. Charley Tong

Sin was informed that he could make a clean breast of it or be thrown

overboard. And the shipmaster, when he was thoroughly in earnest, had a

way of conveying the impression that he meant what he said. He believed

that he knew his man. The comprador was strongly reluctant to have his

head lopped off by the sword of a native executioner, which was very

likely to happen if this terrible O’Shea should turn him over to the

Chinese authorities. Given the promise of immunity in exchange for a

confession, he could flee to Japan or the Straits Settlements and

live handsomely in the society of other Chinese exiles with the funds

that he had piled up during his brief and brilliant business career.

Likewise there would be opportunities in shipping and commerce for a

comprador of his uncommon ability.

“I would honestly enjoy killing you, Charley,” said Captain O’Shea as

they stood together in the wheel-house of the _Whang Ho_. “You are a

smart lad, but ye got too gay with me, and you overplayed your game

when ye slipped under the counter of this steamer in a sampan in the

dark of the night and got busy with the red paint. That sort of silly

jugglery was the Chinese of it, I suppose. Now, I have tried to make it

plain that your life is not worth a pinch of snuff to any one of us.

There is not a man in the ship that wants to lay eyes on Shanghai ever

again. They will be only too glad to quit the country if they have the

price in their pockets, and I will give them the price. So ye must not

hold to the notion that we are afraid of getting in trouble on your

account.”

“I am worth more to you alive than if I am dead,” sullenly muttered

Charley Tong Sin. “Is it not so? You think I will be handy as a pilot,

as an interpreter? I have been doing a deuce of a lot of thinking. I am

no fool, Captain O’Shea. I know pretty well when I am licked. I made a

botch of it in Shanghai. You went blundering about like a buffalo, and

I thought it was a cinch to get you out of the way.”

“’Twas the luck of the Irish that pulled me through,” said O’Shea. “Now

we understand each other, Charley, me lad. I am staking all I have--me

life and me money--to get to the bottom of this infernal secret society

you have mixed yourself up with. ’Tis an instrument I am for the good

of humanity. And if ye turn state’s evidence to enable me to make a

clean, thorough job of it, I think I am justified in giving you a

chance to hot-foot it out of China.”

“Let us call it a bargain, Captain O’Shea. As we used to say in New

York, I am up against it good and plenty. To commit suicide, as many

Chinese would do in a fix like this, is all tommy-rot. Charley Tong Sin

could have no more gin cocktails--what?”

“You can begin the confession right away,” exclaimed the shipmaster.

“One thing at a time,” cheerfully replied the comprador. “I will

take you to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and the village of

Wang-Li-Fu. Then you will find many very interesting things to ask me

to talk about.”

“And ye hope to give me the slip in the meantime,” and Captain O’Shea

showed no ill-will. “Very well, Charley. One thing at a time. Now take

these glasses and have a look at the coast. By my reckoning, we are far

enough to the north’ard to begin to haul inshore.”

The _Whang Ho_ was laboring abeam of a monotonous expanse of marshy

islands and ragged shoals made by the silt of river floods. The

shifting channels were poorly charted, for trade sought the inland

water-ways. The fact that the _Tai Yan_ steamer, with McDougal and Jim

Eldridge on board, had somehow found a passage leading from the sea

convinced Captain O’Shea that he could do likewise with a considerably

smaller vessel. Charley Tong Sin had admitted that he knew the way in,

and he was no more anxious to be drowned than the rest of the company.

“With good luck we can scrape over the sandbars on the afternoon tide,”

said the comprador, “and anchor in deep water for the night. I cannot

show you where to go in the dark. There are no lights.”

The _Whang Ho_ edged steadily nearer the coast. Her crew gazed ahead at

the frothing breakers that tumbled over the far-extended shoals, and

appeared unhappy. By a miracle their steamer was still under them after

struggling through rough winds and high seas, and now they were to be

wrecked, so all signs indicated, in a God-forsaken region of sand and

swamp and mud. However, there was no whimpering. Captain O’Shea, their

overlord, had a trick of knocking a man down and then listening to his

complaints. And he was as ready with a word of commendation as he was

with his disciplinary fists.

“Mr. Kittridge, if we hit bottom, put it to her and jam her over,”

he remarked to the chief engineer. “A chum of mine by the name of

Johnny Kent that sailed with me and held your berth used to clamp his

safety-valves when he had urgent need of steam. Did ye ever try it?”

“God forbid!” fervently ejaculated Mr. Kittridge; “but in this crazy

tub a man will do anything. If you find yourself flyin’ to glory with

a section of a boiler pokin’ in the small of your back, don’t lay it

against me, sir.”

“I like the way ye talk, Mr. Kittridge. Stand by your engines, if ye

please, for we will be in the white water before long.”

The _Whang Ho_ sheered to one side and shouldered past the outermost

shoals. O’Shea took the wheel, and Charley Tong Sin, cool and

quick-witted, told him how to follow the turbid, twisting channel that

wound its course between the sea and the wide mouth of the estuary.

More than once the steamer scraped the oozy bottom, hung and shivered

while the breakers pounded her, and then stubbornly forged ahead,

timbers groaning, boilers hissing, propeller kicking up clouds of mud

astern. It was evident that the channel had shoaled in places since any

other steamer had made the passage, and it was not at all certain that

the _Whang Ho_ could stand the strain of forcing her way to sea again.

“I have not been here since two years ago,” said the comprador. “It is

worse than I expected, you bet! Ai oh, a man that sails with you dies a

dozen deaths, Captain O’Shea.”

“I find it more comfortable than living in the best hotel in Shanghai,”

very pointedly returned the shipmaster as he climbed the spokes of the

big wooden wheel with hands and feet and wrenched the _Whang Ho_ clear

of a hungry sand-spit. By now she was fairly in the midst of the marshy

islands that extended from the watery main-land. The violence of the

surf was broken and the tide moved in broad, sluggish currents. Mr.

Parkinson, who was swinging the sounding lead, shouted that the channel

had deepened to five fathoms. The steamer had survived the passage.

Two miles farther inland she let go anchor in a wide lagoon. The

afternoon had waned. A cloudy twilight was closing down. On every hand

stretched a flat, unbroken region of swamp and creeks and rivers. No

villages were visible nor groves of trees against the sky-line to mark

the situation of a temple. A few small fishing-boats with ragged sails

fled at sight of the foreign steamer. The comprador waved his hand to

starboard and exclaimed:

“Yonder it is, the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells, as you call it

in English. Wait till the tide goes down, and you will find out pretty

quick why the Chinese give it that funny name.”

“’Tis a filthy-looking country,” quoth Captain O’Shea. “It looks like

one great big sewer, with the yellow water and the sludge and the slime

on the banks.”

“It was all very well drained one time, long ago,” explained Charley

Tong Sin. “Then there were many people and towns. The Tai Pings

destroyed the canals and played the dickens with everything. And

nothing has been repaired, so the people don’t live here any more.”

“And where is this place called Wang-Li-Fu?” demanded O’Shea.

“Six miles up that stinking river. You think you will see the Painted

Joss to-morrow, Captain?”

“The Stinking River and the Painted Joss! You are loosening up,

Charley. I am near the end of me journey when you say things like that.

I have heard of them before.”

“Two other foreign men--only two--have seen the Painted Joss, and it

was unfortunate for them.” The comprador said this softly and with an

evil grin. He had overstepped the mark. Captain O’Shea gripped him by

the neck and shook him savagely as he thundered in his ear:

“Any more of that, and I will forget the bargain we made. One of those

men was a friend of mine, and by rights I ought to drill ye with a

bullet as a favor to him.”

Between chattering teeth Charley Tong Sin, suddenly abject, begged for

his life. Presently he moved restlessly from one deck to another, but

always a man followed and kept watch of him, as Captain O’Shea had

ordered. The ship’s company, most of them off duty and wearied with the

stress and hardships of the voyage, gathered under an awning stretched

between the deck-houses and talked in low tones. This melancholy, empty

landscape had a quality curiously depressing. With the falling tide the

swamps and the muddy banks were laid bare and the air became foul and

heavy with the smell of decayed vegetation, of ooze, of dead fish. The

ebb and flow of salt-water failed to cleanse and sweeten these sluggish

streams and stagnant lagoons and abandoned canals.

The men who had followed Captain O’Shea to this place were no longer

so many vagabonds and failures struggling for survival. They had been

welded together, in a way. They were an organization with something

like _esprit de corps_ and could be depended on to act as a unit.

Such a feeling as this brings to life dead self-respect and shattered

confidence. They knew not at all what the morrow might bring forth, but

every one of them was anxious to play the man, to stand the test, to

redeem himself in his own sight, to justify Captain O’Shea’s faith in

him.

It was not a night to invite sleep. The adventurers felt the immense

loneliness of this loathsome anchorage. It was unlike the populous

China which they had hitherto known. One might believe, with the

natives, that ghosts and demons had power to curse and blast a region

in which some violation of the _fung-shui_, or sacred rites of wind and

water, had angered the supernatural influences. The breeze died to a

dead calm. The lifeless air reeked with the stenches from the mouth of

the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells.

It was drawing toward midnight when Mr. Kittridge came on deck and said

to Captain O’Shea, who was sitting with a group of his men:

“I shall have to start the pumps, sir. The vessel is leakin’ much worse

than when I first reported it.”

“Um-m, I was hoping we could lay her on a beach after we have finished

our business up the river and calk her plates,” replied the master of

the _Whang Ho_. “Is she making water faster than you can handle it,

Mr. Kittridge?”

“She acts to me as if a plate dropped clean out of her a few minutes

ago, sir. The pumps may help, but I have a notion that the whole

rotten, blankety river is runnin’ into her.”

Captain O’Shea jumped below and was promptly convinced that the gloomy

diagnosis of the chief engineer had a large basis of fact. The water

was fairly rushing into the holds and gurgling over the ballast. Likely

enough, the battering passage in from sea had sheared and wrenched away

enough rusty rivets to weaken the junction of two or more plates, and

they had been unable any longer to withstand the pressure. It really

made no difference whether or not this theory was the correct one. The

fact was that the venerable _Whang Ho_ had suddenly decided to lay

her bones in the mud with six fathoms of water above her keel. Mr.

Kittridge pensively caressed his gray whiskers and remarked with a sigh:

“I mentioned the pumps from force of habit. It’s really ridiculous to

stay below any longer, Captain. We gave the bloody old tub more than

she could stand, and she’s peacefully chucked it up. She’s sinkin’ very

quiet and decent, I’ll say that for her.”

“’Tis time we said good-by to her,” quoth O’Shea. “Draw your fires, if

you can, Mr. Kittridge, and I will get the boats ready.”

“I do seem to find trouble wherever I go,” sadly murmured the chief

engineer.

The men on deck took the news with no great show of excitement. This

was the kind of voyage which one could not reasonably expect to be

commonplace. To have to escape from a sinking steamer was an episode,

not a disaster. In few words, Captain O’Shea assured them that he had

no intention of letting this uncomfortable little happening interfere

with the business for which he had employed them. The insurance

underwriters would be out of pocket, but who cared a rap for them,

anyhow? Thereupon he issued orders, swiftly, intelligently, with

masterful vehemence. The two boats which appeared most serviceable

were swung outboard and held ready to launch. They would hold a dozen

men each without crowding. Water-kegs were filled, the galley and

store-room ransacked for tins of meat and biscuit, bags of potatoes

and rice. The fire-arms and cutlasses were served out and the cases

of ammunition divided between the two boats. Meanwhile the _Whang Ho_

continued to sink with a certain dignity and decorum. One could find

nothing dramatic in this shipwreck. Every one moved with haste, but

there was no outcry.

Only one mischance marred the exodus from the _Whang Ho_. All hands

were absorbed, and quite naturally, in delaying their departure as

little as possible. Delay meant something worse than wet feet. In fact,

the main deck was almost level with the water when the boats were ready

to shove clear. For once the _Whang Ho_ had moved rapidly, although

in a lamentable direction. With so much to do in so short a time, it

was not extraordinary that the vigilant espionage which surrounded

Charley Tong Sin should be relaxed, not to say forgotten, for a moment.

Even Captain O’Shea neglected to keep an eye on him, the business of

abandoning ship on a dark night at excessively short notice being

calculated to tax the resources of the most capable commander.

The comprador took advantage of these distractions to erase himself

from the scene. The boats were held against the side of the steamer,

while the captain took tally of the men in them, scrambling from one

boat to the other with a globe lantern swinging in his fist. Charley

Tong Sin was indubitably missing. O’Shea leaped on board the moribund

_Whang Ho_, which was now sobbing and gurgling tremendously, and made

a flying search of the cabins and state-rooms. It was obvious that

this elusive young Chinese had not vanished below decks, where by now

nothing but a fish could exist. And unless Captain Michael O’Shea

wished to join the fishes, it was time for him to go.

Chagrined and anxious, he returned to his boat, and the men frantically

plied oars. A moment or two later the _Whang Ho_ went under with very

little fuss, meeting her end with the calm of a Chinese philosopher.

The boats rocked in the waves that rolled away from the place where she

had been, and the rays of the lanterns revealed many large and greasy

bubbles.

Captain O’Shea wasted no time in sentimental regrets. The _Whang Ho_

was a dead issue. What vitally concerned him was the whereabouts of

that valuable passenger, Charley Tong Sin. It was absurd to suppose

that he had fallen overboard and given up the ghost. A rascal of his

kidney had as many lives as a cat. It was much more plausible to

surmise that he had unostentatiously laid hold of a life-belt, slipped

over the stern, and made for the nearest shore. The boats moved to

and fro, looking for him, but the darkness, misty and opaque, made it

hopeless to discover the head of a swimmer who by this time might have

left the water and concealed himself in the marsh.

“I misdoubt that me policy was sound,” said Captain O’Shea to Mr.

Kittridge. “Maybe I ought to have shot him, anyhow.”

“It would ha’ been a good job,” grunted the chief engineer. “And now

he’ll streak it for this village of Wang-Li-Fu and give an alarm.”

“Precisely that. But unless he can pick up a sampan or a fishing-boat

he will make slow headway flounderin’ through the swamps and swimming

the creeks. ’Tis up to us to beat him to it.”

Mr. Parkinson, who was in command of the other boat, was ordered to

steer alongside for consultation. It was promptly agreed that the party

should first find the mouth of the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells

and then move up-stream without delay. It would be slow and blundering

navigation, but if three or four miles could be traversed before

daylight they might tie up to the bank and reconnoitre within striking

distance of their goal.

“I do not know what kind of a mess we will hop into,” O’Shea told them

before the boats separated. “We may have to fight our way, thanks

to that slippery divil of a comprador, and I am not asking ye to go

anywhere that I will not go meself. Some of you are not trained to use

weapons, but if ye will cut loose and blaze away and not think too much

about your own skins, we can make it uncomfortable for a slather of

Chinese. There is plenty of ammunition, so don’t scrimp yourselves.”

The boats slid slowly into the entrance of the wide, sluggish stream.

The lanterns were extinguished. The only sound was the cadenced

thump of the thole-pins. If any of the men felt the prickly chill of

cowardice, they kept it to themselves. Now and then the keels furrowed

the mud, and when the boats stranded hard and fast, the crews waded

overboard and shoved them ahead. Thus the little flotilla progressed

until dawn flushed the eastern sky and the vapors, streaming upward

from the marshes, curled and drifted like filmy clouds. Higher ground

and the green, checkered squares of tilled fields were discernible a

short distance beyond.

The boats turned into the mouth of a tiny creek where the tall rushes

curtained them from observation. This was a favorable halting place,

and a cold breakfast was hastily eaten. O’Shea had a poor opinion

of fighting on an empty stomach. He addressed himself with marked

deference to a very neatly dressed man with iron-gray hair who had said

little during the voyage. His face was haggard and his eyes were tired

with weariness of living.

“You have seen service, sir, and ye have led drilled men,” said O’Shea.

“The cards are dealt, but from now on you can play them better than I.

I will be obliged to ye for advice.”

The cashiered officer looked grateful. This kind of recognition had

power to move him. With a diffident manner, as if his professional

opinion had long since ceased to interest any one, he replied:

“Most Chinese villages are walled. There will be at least one gate

facing the river and two or three on the inland side. It is often

awkward to make a landing under fire from boats. I suggest we divide

our force. If you approve, Captain, I will take ten of the most active

men and disembark here. We can fetch a wide circuit of the town, and

it will not be difficult to make our way across the rice fields and

ditches. You can put the rest of them in one boat and row up in front

of the town, waiting in the stream until we are in a position to make a

rush. Then we will drive home a simultaneous attack in front and rear.”

“Napoleon could not beat it,” heartily exclaimed O’Shea. “And if ye

shoot fast enough and kick up a terrible racket, they will think ye are

an army. What will the signal be?”

“Three rifle shots.”

“Ay, ay, Mr. Bannister. ’Tis the sensible plan that ye take command of

the army while I hoist the rear-admiral’s pennant over the navy. We

have no reserves, but many a famous victory would have been missing

from history if the lads that won them had waited for the reserves to

come up.”

The chosen ten forsook the boats and tramped off behind their soldierly

leader. A few minutes later the expedition of Captain O’Shea got

under way, his boat hugging the muddy shore and dodging behind its

ragged indentations. It was not long before a wide curve of the river

disclosed to view the tiled roofs, the crumbling brick wall, and the

towered gate-ways of a village. In front of it were several rickety

wharfs, or stagings, built of bamboo poles lashed together. At the

outer end of one of these lay a two-masted junk, her hawse-holes

painted to resemble two huge eyes. The tide had begun to ebb, and the

junk was already heeled so that her deck sloped toward the river. This

craft appeared to be deserted. No pigtailed heads bobbed behind the

immensely heavy bulwarks. If the army officer had been a Napoleon,

Captain O’Shea showed himself a Nelson.

“Pull like blazes for the junk yonder,” he shouted to his men. “We will

pile aboard her and take cover.”

The junk was directly in front of the gate-way in the village wall,

and perhaps a hundred yards distant from it. The intervening space

was beach, a miry roadway, and a disorderly row of shanties made of

drift-wood, with a few boats hauled out for repairs. The heavy timbers

of the junk made her a nautical fortress, and the high sides would be

difficult of direct assault.

The men swung lustily at the oars, and the boat shot out into the open

river. O’Shea steered wide of the village until he could turn and make

directly for the junk. It was an admirable bit of strategy, but wholly

wasted on this sleepy, shabby Chinese village. There was never a sign

of a hostile demonstration. As an anticlimax the thing was absurd. A

crowd of men, women, and children streamed out through the gate in the

wall and stared with much excited chatter at the foreign invaders.

Apparently their behavior meant no more than a harmless curiosity.

Several garrulous old gentlemen squatted upon fragments of timber

and pulled at their bamboo pipes while they discussed the singular

visitation with the oracular demeanor of so many owls.

The bold O’Shea grinned sheepishly. His sensations were those of a man

who beheld a heroic enterprise suddenly turned into low comedy. He

glanced at the amused faces of his followers and said:

“’Tis not what ye might call a desperate resistance. Let us promenade

ashore and look the town over.”

They quitted their fortress and moved along the narrow, swaying staging

of bamboo, their rifles ready for use in the event of an ambuscade. The

Chinese crowd promptly retreated in noisy confusion. O’Shea ordered

a halt. After some delay, three signal shots came down the wind from

Major Bannister’s force. He was about to attack the village from the

landward side. Now the shopkeepers and coolies scuttled madly away

from O’Shea’s party to seek shelter within the walls and discover what

all this extraordinary excitement could mean.

Behind them tramped the naval brigade into streets from which the

inhabitants were vanishing as rapidly as possible. Somewhere near the

centre of the town O’Shea and Major Bannister joined forces. This pair

of valiant leaders eyed each other with mutually puzzled chagrin.

“We just walked in without the slightest trouble,” confessed the army

man. “What do you make of it?”

“I had the same experience,” observed O’Shea. “And I do not know what

to make of it at all. ’Twas me firm conviction that we were prancin’

into a hornet’s nest. The information all pointed that way. I would

call it a funny kind of a surprise party.”

“The villagers have no intention of making it unpleasant for us. They

have been giving my men eggs and melons and chickens, to keep us

good-natured, I presume.”

“Well, we will find quarters and fetch our grub from the junk, and I

will buy the drinks, if ye can locate them, for the joke seems to be on

me.”

They found the village tavern, consisting of several detached buildings

set in a large court-yard. The agitated landlord kow-towed himself

almost black in the face, and in trembling accents expressed his

desire to bestow all his goods upon the warlike foreigners if only

his miserable life might be spared. He summarily ejected a few native

guests of low degree, who fled without delaying to argue the matter.

The invaders set the tavern coolies to sweeping and scrubbing the

filthy buildings and took charge of the kitchen with its row of earthen

fire-pots. There was no lack of room for men to sleep three and four in

a row upon the _k’angs_, or brick platforms used for the purpose, and

the ragged quilts were hung outside to air. In short, the tavern was

transformed into a camp which had no serious discomforts.

Having taken care of his men, Captain O’Shea found leisure to ponder

over the situation, a process which left him with a headache. He

rambled unmolested from one end of the village to the other, searching

for clues that might link themselves with the Painted Joss and the

tragedy of Bill Maguire. There were two small, dilapidated temples, one

of them inhabited by a few Buddhist priests in yellow robes. O’Shea was

permitted to enter them and explore to his heart’s content. They were

nothing more than village shrines, however, in which the perfunctory

rites were held and offerings made--such places as might have been seen

in a thousand Chinese towns. Nor did the village itself, excepting for

an air of general decay, differ from the hamlets of a dozen provinces.

“I have a harrowing suspicion that Charley Tong Sin made a monkey of

me,” ruefully sighed O’Shea, “or maybe I have been all wrong from the

start. The Chinese proposition has too many twists in it for a white

man to fathom.”

As a person of considerable confidence in his ability to master

difficulties, his self-esteem had been dealt a hard blow. His

imagination had pictured a large, stirring climax of his pilgrimage,

and here he was all adrift in a wretched little village of no

consequence whatever, the last place in the world to find the

headquarters of a secret organization so mysteriously powerful as

to cast its sinister shadow throughout China, and even across the

seas. And yet the evidence had been by no means vague and misleading.

Beginning with the fragmentary revelations of the demented sailor,

coming next to the disclosures of poor McDougal’s diary, he had been

led straight to the town of Wang-Li-Fu, on the River of Ten Thousand

Evil Smells. He had felt that the hand of destiny was guiding him.

Returning to the tavern yard O’Shea found his men cheerfully making

friends of the villagers and accepting the situation with the ready

adaptability of true soldiers of fortune. They looked to the leader

for orders, but he had none to give them. He had been placed in the

ridiculous position of providing wages and rations for a perfectly

superfluous expeditionary force.

“Just what did you expect to turn up in this pigsty of a settlement?”

gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge, who seemed disappointed that he had

not broken a few heads. “Whatever it was, it fell flat.”

“It did that,” frankly admitted O’Shea. “’Tis a painful subject, Mr.

Kittridge, and we will not discuss it now. But I am not done with the

riddle of Wang-Li-Fu.”

Three days passed, and singly and in squads the invaders ransacked the

village and its suburbs, poking into shops, alleys, dwellings, and

court-yards and taking stock of the inmates thereof. That the people

were very poor and very industrious was all that one could say of them.

And they were no more to be suspected of plotting deeds of violence

than so many rabbits. Doggedly persistent, unwilling to confess himself

beaten, O’Shea shifted his quest to the open country for miles outside

of Wang-Li-Fu. It was a region of green fields gridironed with ditches

and rutted paths, and dotted with toilers in blue cotton blouses and

straw hats, who tilled their crops from dawn to dark.

It was obviously useless to extend the investigation any considerable

distance away from this region. If the secret was not to be unearthed

in the vicinity of Wang-Li-Fu, then his conclusions had been all wrong.

The villagers assured him that this was, in truth, none other than

Wang-Li-Fu, and the baffled, perplexed O’Shea could not let go of the

opinion that the goal was somewhere near at hand. Otherwise, why all

the elaborate stratagems in Shanghai to thwart his voyage to the River

of Ten Thousand Evil Smells?

He had imagined himself attacking a stronghold of some sort, a

headquarters of desperate criminals who must be wiped out. But if that

slippery comprador Charley Tong Sin had carried a warning to the men of

the Painted Joss, he must have fled elsewhere than to this commonplace,

harmless village. At any rate, it seemed absurd to tarry much longer

in Wang-Li-Fu with a force of armed retainers.

At the end of a fortnight, O’Shea was of the opinion that his loyal

legion had better seek to mend its fortunes in some other quarter. He

was ashamed to look them in the face. The fiasco cut him to the quick.

He had been as mad as poor Bill Maguire. In future he would stick to

his trade as a shipmaster.

Meanwhile, the malarial poison of the marshes found its way into his

blood. He failed to realize that he was ill, and paid no attention to

the little flashes of fever that came by night and the creeping, chilly

feeling that troubled him in the morning.

There came a day when he was unable to rise from the brick

sleeping-platform. The fever increased, suddenly, violently. It caught

him unprepared. His plan of retreat had not been announced, and now he

was incapable of leadership. His mind alternated between delirium and

stupor. When he talked it was of many inconsequential things. One might

have said that the evil spirit of the Painted Joss had laid its spell

of misfortune upon him. In the court-yard of the tavern his lieutenants

held a conference.

“Can anybody make head or tail of this infernal situation?” gloomily

inquired Mr. Kittridge. “What in hades are we going to do about it?”

“Try to pull Captain O’Shea through this fever before we think of

anything else,” stoutly affirmed Mr. Parkinson. “We jammed into this

crazy voyage with our eyes shut. With all of us it was anything to get

clear of Shanghai. And it’s useless business to sit and growl about it

as hard luck. What do you say, Major Bannister?”

The army man smiled at sight of their discouraged countenances and

quietly answered:

“What else can we chaps expect but hard luck? Really, I should be

surprised to find anything else. I can tell you one thing, gentlemen. I

have campaigned in the tropics, and I know something about this swamp

fever. We had best get out of here and take Captain O’Shea with us. If

we don’t, he will die as sure as sunrise, and the rest of us will be

down with it before long. It caught him first because he was fagged

with worry.”

“We agree with you there,” said Mr. Parkinson. “But we seem to have

overlooked a line of retreat. That was the Irish of it, I suppose. If

we go down river in our two boats we’ll have to work ’em out to sea

over those nasty shoals and then run the chance of being picked up

adrift. We might get away with it, but it would kill a man as sick as

O’Shea.”

“Why not go up-river?” suggested Major Bannister. “By means of a few

words of Chinese and a great many gestures I have extracted from the

village head-men the information that there is a European mission

station about a hundred and fifty miles northwest of here. We can make

part of the journey by boat and then hike overland. With a litter and

coolies to carry it, we may be able to take Captain O’Shea through

alive. It’s better than letting him die in this pest-hole.”

“That’s the most sensible speech I’ve heard since we signed on,”

grunted Mr. Kittridge. “And you can pull out of this rotten Wang-Li-Fu

not a minute too soon to please me.”

The village head-men were summoned, and these venerable worthies

declared themselves anxious to aid the sick leader of the foreign

soldiers. He had played with their children, paid the shopkeepers their

prices without dispute, and sat with the old men in the tea-houses.

Nor had his armed force committed any abuses, although they held the

village at their mercy. It was wisdom to try to carry Captain O’Shea to

his own people. The village would gladly furnish a guide and plenty of

coolies, a covered litter, and a small house-boat in which the sick man

could be made comfortable.

The evacuation of Wang-Li-Fu was a dismal business. The adventurers

were oppressed by a sense of failure and discouragement. Their

enterprise had fizzled out like a dampened match. This final act was

inglorious. Their plight was worse than when they had been stranded as

beach-combers in Shanghai. They carried Captain O’Shea to a sampan,

or flat-bottomed boat, with a tiny cabin of bamboo and matting, which

could be towed against the sluggish current of the river. The men

disposed themselves in the two boats saved from the _Whang Ho_ steamer,

and a squad of half-naked coolies strung themselves along a towing-rope

to help track the sampan up-stream.

The sick man lay stretched upon his quilts and showed little interest

in the slow progress of the flotilla. Between spells of heavy

drowsiness he watched the slimy shore and fringing marsh slide past.

Through the first day the wind was cool and the air bright, and the

boats trailed up-river until after nightfall before they were pulled

into the bank to moor. As the part of caution, no fires were made and

conversation was hushed. The foreigners had an uncomfortable suspicion

that this might be hostile territory, although they had discovered

nothing to warrant the conjecture. But O’Shea had been babbling about

the Painted Joss while flighty with fever, and Charley Tong Sin was

still unaccounted for.

Between midnight and morning the sick man came out of his uneasy

dreams. As it seemed to him, he was clear-headed, his senses alert, his

judgment normal. Just why he should be cooped up in this native boat

was a bit difficult to comprehend, but why try to understand it? There

was only one problem of real importance. And now was the time to solve

it. O’Shea laughed to think what a stupid, blundering fool he had been

to recruit an armed expedition and come clattering into this corner of

China with so much fuss and noise.

If a man wanted to find the Painted Joss, all he had to do was listen

to the friendly, familiar voices that whispered in his ears. O’Shea

could hear them now. He accepted them as a matter of course. His eyes

were very bright as he pulled on his shoes and fumbled for the revolver

in its holster under the pillow. Curiously enough, he was no longer

conscious of great physical weakness. It was tremendously urgent that

he should go to find the Painted Joss without a moment’s delay. His men

would not understand if he should tell them about the friendly voices

that were offering to show him the way. They might try to restrain him.

He must leave the boat quietly, unobserved.

Crawling from beneath the matting curtain, he gained the river bank.

His knees were exceedingly shaky and his hands trembled uncertainly,

but he was confident that he had found the trail of the Painted Joss

and that his vigor would soon return. Charley Tong Sin outwit him?

Nonsense! O’Shea would have been startled beyond measure to know that

he was wandering off in delirium. He would have taken a shot at any one

rash enough to tell him so.

Undetected he moved along the shore, silent as a red Indian, and was

presently lost in the darkness. It was muddy walking, and he turned

into the tall marsh grass, where a carpet of dead vegetation made

firmer footing. Frequently he was compelled to halt and regain his

labored breath, but his purpose was unwavering. The voices drove him

on. He had no sense of fear. After some time his erratic progress led

him back to the river. There he stumbled over a log and sat down to

wait for daybreak, which had begun to flush the sky.

His head throbbed as though hammers were pounding it and waves of

blurring dizziness troubled him. What was more disquieting, the guiding

voices had ceased to talk to him. He felt crushing disappointment and

sadness. His eyes filled with tears.

Dawn found him seated dejectedly with his back propped against the

log, his head drooping, while he stared at the muddy river. Here he

would wait on the chance that his friends might find him. As the day

brightened, his aimless vision was caught by something which powerfully

awakened his weary, befogged perceptions. It acted as a stimulant of

tremendous force. Sitting bolt upright he gazed at a footprint, cleanly

outlined, which had become sun-dried and hardened in a stratum of clay.

It had been made by a leather sole and heel. The outline was pointed

and narrow. Into O’Shea’s quickened memory there flashed the picture

of Charley Tong Sin stretched upon the cabin floor of the _Whang Ho_

steamer, his patent-leather shoes waving gently as he went to sleep

under the soporific influence of a knock-out blow. He felt absolutely

certain that this particular print had been left by the fashionable

footgear of the vanished comprador. The voices had guided him aright.

It was here that Charley Tong Sin had come ashore after making his way

up the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells in some kind of a native boat.

There was one chance in a million that O’Shea should have halted to

wait in this precise spot where his eyes might see the thing. He

dragged himself to his feet and scanned the melancholy landscape.

There were no villages in sight; only the marsh and fields and a vast

mound of débris to mark the place where once had stood a city. Even

the walls surrounding it had been levelled. It was scarcely more than

a wide-spread excrescence of broken brick and tiling partly overgrown

with vegetation. The landscape could have held no more desolate

reminder of the wreckage left in the wake of the Tai Ping rebels.

It was plausible to surmise that this was the real Wang-Li-Fu, the city

which O’Shea had set out to find. The squalid village much lower down

the river might have been founded by refugees who gave the same name to

their new abode. And the villagers had been too ignorant to explain the

blunder. To them there was only one Wang-Li-Fu. How Charley Tong Sin

must have laughed at leaving O’Shea and his men to waste themselves in

a chase that led nowhere.

It was a pallid, unshaven, tottering ghost of Captain Michael O’Shea

that mustered strength to walk very slowly in the direction of the

ruined city. Once he paused and became irresolute, but a little way

beyond he found the imprint of a narrow shoe of European workmanship

on the soft bank of a ditch. His stumbling steps led him, as by an

unerring divination, toward the highest part of the great mound of

débris where tall trees grew from the crumbling masonry. His painful

advance became less difficult when he found a path from which the

obstructions had been removed.

Presently he stood looking across a cleared space in the midst of

the ruins, invisible from river or highway. In it were several small

buildings and one much larger. The timbers set into its walls were

carved and gilded, the curving roof of dull red tile. There was no

living thing in sight. This isolated community was so situated that it

was wholly concealed from strangers, and the natives of the region were

apt to shun the blasted city as haunted by demons. No watchers were

posted to guard against intrusion.

O’Shea crossed the open space and made for the large building,

which had the aspect of a temple. Unhesitatingly he approached the

massive wooden doors and found them ajar. He walked like a man in a

trance, muttering to himself. Passing within, he entered a sort of

anteroom partitioned by means of screens wonderfully embroidered.

The stone pavement rang to the tread of his heels. The place echoed

with emptiness. He pressed on and came into a room of greater extent.

Its corners were lost in shadow. Rows of pillars supported the dusky

rafters upon which gilded dragons seemed to writhe. The windows were

small and set close to the roof and the light of early morning had not

dispelled the gloom.

In the centre of the floor was an altar. Behind it towered an image of

Buddha, and yet it was unlike the images of the bland and contemplative

Buddha commonly to be found in the temples of the East. It was a

monstrous thing. Only an artist with an inspiration from the devil

could have so handled tools as to make those wooden features seem to

lust after all abominable wickedness. The color of this seated statue

was crimson. Amid the shadows it glowed like fire or blood. On the

breast, above the folded arms, stood out in broad, black strokes a

Chinese symbol or character which O’Shea recognized with a sensation of

creeping repugnance.

“The Painted Joss!” he gasped.

His attention was so strongly caught and held by this malevolent image

that for the moment he had eyes for nothing else. Presently, however,

he became aware that another figure confronted him, a living presence.

It was a man sitting in a massive chair of teak-wood, by the side of

the Buddha. The bulk of him was enormous. He was both fat and mighty

of frame, and not even the towering amplitude of the image could dwarf

his proportions and belittle the impression he conveyed. His face

was broad and heavy-jowled, the mouth sensual and cruel. With folded

arms he sat and gazed at the foreign intruder. This unflinching,

scornful immobility had a certain distinction. He believed that he must

instantly die at the hands of this European with the white, savage face

and the blazing eyes who covered him with a revolver. It was futile to

cry out and summon help. As is customary with Chinese in positions of

authority, this high-priest of iniquity had gone to the temple to have

audience with his servitors very early in the morning. They had not yet

joined him and O’Shea was quick to read his own advantage.

It was right and just that he should slay this huge man in the

crimson robe who ruled the temple of the Painted Joss. He had come

ten thousand miles to be judge and executioner. He was ready to kill

and be killed in his turn. But the revolver was strangely heavy and

it wavered so that he was unable to hold it at arm’s length. A haze

bothered his vision and he could not brush it from his eyes. Something

was the matter with his knees. They were giving way. With an incoherent

exclamation, O’Shea fell unconscious upon the stone flagging and

the revolver clattered from his limp hand. He had paid the price of

exertion beyond his strength.

When his senses returned there was in his mind only the dimmest

recollection of how he came to be in this dreadful place. The vagaries

of fever no longer possessed him. Clear-headed but wretchedly weak and

nerveless, he gazed about him and discovered that he was alone in the

unholy temple. The shadows were not so heavy on the pillars, the gilded

rafters, and the marble altar. The crimson image of the seated Buddha

loomed flamboyant and portentous and the Chinese symbol painted on its

breast was boldly outlined.

There was no way of escape. The building was a most effectual prison.

His revolver had been taken from him. He could not even fight and die

like a man. The fact was that this desperate extremity lacked the

proper sense of reality. It was so contrary to reason and he had such

shadowy, confused ideas of what had preceded, that this was more like

nightmare or delirium. And it seemed impossible that he should not

presently find himself awake.

What most tenaciously persisted in his memory was the image of the huge

man in the teak-wood chair. He was a vision which could not be denied.

Such a one as he had power to sway the wills of others to his desires,

to create and direct great enterprises and send his influence afar, but

never for good. If he ordered murder done in distant places his secret

edicts would be obeyed, nor would his agent dare to thwart him. If

there was such an organization as O’Shea had assumed, then he had stood

face to face with the dominant personality, the compelling force from

which radiated infernal activities.

“I saw him, whether I am meself or somebody else,” the prisoner

muttered with a groan. “And he will come back and the brand will be

chopped into me, same as was done to poor Bill Maguire. ’Tis a tough

finish, if all this is really true. My God, I wish I knew what had

happened to me. Yesterday I was going up-river with me men, and now----”

He struggled to his feet. A supreme effort of will conquered physical

weakness. A man condemned to die is capable of forgetting bodily ills.

Just then a young man appeared from the direction of the door-way. He

wore native garments, but O’Shea recognized him. It was Charley Tong

Sin, whose smile was unpleasant. In his hand was O’Shea’s revolver,

which he was careful to hold ready for use. The jaunty, affable manner

of the comprador had returned. He appeared very well satisfied with

himself as he exclaimed, by way of greeting.

“It is an unexpected pleasure, you bet, Captain O’Shea. I have waited

till you were gone from Wang-Li-Fu. It was reported that you were very

sick and went up the river yesterday with your men. You decided to come

and see us, to visit the Painted Joss? You wished to make some trouble?”

“’Tis the last day I will make trouble for any one, by the looks of

things,” replied O’Shea. “You win, Charley.”

“You are a smart man,” grinned the other. “But you had too much

curiosity. I am a good fellow. I will tell you what you want to know.

You will not give it away. They are getting ready to cut your visit

pretty short.”

There was the chatter of voices somewhere outside and the brazen mutter

of a gong. O’Shea kept silence. He was not as resigned to his fate as

Charley Tong Sin inferred. He was watching every motion of the gloating

young man and his eyes measured the distance between them.

“You will feel better if you know,” tauntingly cried the Chinese. “You

have seen the Painted Joss. You have seen a man sitting beside it, the

great and terrible Chung himself, the ruler of the Pih-lien-Kiao, the

_Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.”

“Much obliged, Charley,” grimly interrupted O’Shea. “Tell me some more.

I am sorry I could not have words with the terrible Chung. And the

brand that ye chop into people, your trademark?”

“It is the mark that means _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_. It is

a favor to tell you, Captain O’Shea. No other foreigner, no Chinese

except the servants of Chung, have heard it spoken. But you will not

speak it anywhere.”

“There’s more that I want to know,” said O’Shea, “though precious

little good the information will do me.”

“Ha! Why did you not have so much sense before and mind your own

business?”

It was absurd to carry on such a dialogue as this, as O’Shea perceived,

but Charley Tong Sin was enjoying this session with the rash shipmaster

who had formerly held the upper hand. Before the victim could be

subjected to further taunts he heard the massive doors opened and

other sounds to indicate that bars were sliding into place to fasten

them on the inside. The huge man in the crimson robe, the great and

terrible Chung, lumbered into view and seated himself in the chair of

teak-wood. Charley Tong Sin humbly bowed several times. The personage

beckoned the twain nearer and spoke briefly. He desired to conduct a

cross-examination of his own with the comprador as interpreter.

“He wishes to know why you have come to this place?” was the first

question addressed to O’Shea.

“Because ye butchered a friend of mine, a red-headed sailor by the name

of Jim Eldridge,” was the unflinching reply. “He told me about your

dirty devilment as well as he could, and I saw what ye did to him.”

The huge man showed signs of consternation when this was conveyed to

him. He uttered a bellowing interrogation.

“He is not alive? You have talked with his ghost?” shrilly demanded

Charley Tong Sin.

“’Twas him that sent me here,” declared O’Shea. “Ye can impart it to

the big ugly mug yonder that I have had visits from the ghost of the

red-headed sailor that he killed and branded.”

With an excited, heedless gesture, Charley Tong Sin raised the

revolver. He had been long accustomed to wearing European clothes, and

the flowing sleeves of his Chinese outer garment impeded his motions. A

fold of the silk fabric fell over the butt of the weapon, and he tried

to brush it aside with his left hand. This other sleeve was caught and

held for a moment by the sharp firing-pin of the cocked hammer.

This trifling mishap, gave O’Shea a desperate opportunity. With a flash

of his normal agility he leaped across the intervening space. The

comprador strove frantically to free the weapon, but only entangled it

the more. The episode was closed before the crimson-robed personage

could play a part. O’Shea’s shoulder rammed Charley Tong Sin and sent

him sprawling, and the revolver was instantly wrested from his grasp.

“The doors are locked,” panted O’Shea, “and before your men break in, I

will send the both of ye to hell. Sit where you are, ye terrible Chung.

You overplayed your game, Charley.”

The comprador seemed to shrink within his clothes. His mouth hung open

and his face was ashen. He was eager to clutch at any straw which might

give him the chance of life. Shrinking from the scowling presence in

the chair, he began to talk a sing-song babble of words that tumbled

over each other.

“I will help you get away alive if you do not kill me. Captain O’Shea,

I will explain about Jim Eldridge; I will not lie to you. All the

secrets I will tell you. There was a steamer, the _Tai Yan_, and she

came over the bar from the sea in a big storm, at the time of a flood.

It was do this or go to the bottom because the engines had broke.

A boat with sailors rowed up the river. They were foolish men who

believed the stories that gold and silver treasure was hidden in the

ruins of this old Wang-Li-Fu. And they found this temple, and they knew

too much.

“All but two of the men were able to run quick to the river, but

Eldridge and one named McDougal ran into this place, trying to hide.

They ran into the temple before they were captured. There was a

little building, but now it is ashes and much sticks of burnt wood.

In that building those two men were locked to be killed next day. The

red-headed man was a demon, I tell you. Walls could not hold him. In

the night he set fire to the building, and it was a great blaze. But he

was caught and punished.”

“Ye left him for dead, and he came to,” growled O’Shea. “And so

McDougal got away!”

“I can tell you more secrets,” wailed Charley Tong Sin, but his

services as an informer were suddenly cut short. The huge man in

the chair had raised his voice in a tremendous call for help to his

followers without. Otherwise he had sat composed, glaring at O’Shea.

It was his hand that slew Charley Tong Sin as a traitor. He was on his

feet, the heavy chair raised aloft. He swung it with amazing ease. It

was no longer a massive article of furniture, but a missile in the

hands of a man of gigantic strength. His movements were not clumsy.

The chair flew through the air. O’Shea dodged, but Charley Tong Sin

flung up his arms, taken unawares. The impact would have brained an ox.

The whirling mass of teak smote the terrified comprador on the head

and chest and he crumpled to the pavement. He was as dead as though he

had been caught beneath the hammer of a pile-driver. The tableau was

an extraordinary one. O’Shea stood staring at the broken body of the

young Chinese. The man in the crimson robe stirred not from his tracks.

Implacable, unafraid, he had executed the last sentence of _The Sect of

the Fatal Obligation_.

The people outside were clamoring at the doors, and O’Shea heard the

thud and crash of some kind of an improvised battering-ram. He sighed

and found the thought of death at their hands very bitter. But he would

not go alone. He faced the great and terrible Chung and slowly raised

the revolver.

The arch-assassin bade him wait with a gesture so imperious, so

mandatory, that O’Shea hesitated. The bearing of the man held some

large significance. His dark, evil countenance expressed rather sadness

than wrath. He slid a hand into the folds of his robe and raised the

hand to his mouth. Whatever it was that he swallowed wrought its work

with swift and deadly virulence. Swaying like a tree about to fall, he

strode to the marble altar and fell across it with his head buried in

his arms. In this posture he died, in front of the image of the glowing

Buddha, whose graven lineaments seemed to express the unholy ambitions

and emotions of his own soul.

O’Shea managed to walk to a corner of the temple and slumped down upon

a marble bench where the Painted Joss cast its deepest shadow. His

strength had ebbed again. Listlessly, almost inattentive, he heard the

assault upon the doors renewed and the splintering of plank. When the

Chinese mob came tumbling in he could try to shoot straight and hit a

few of them, and then they would close in on him. It was the end of the

game.

A few minutes and the servitors of Chung came jostling and shouting

through the anteroom. Then they halted abruptly. Their noise was

hushed. The light that fell from the windows near the roof showed them

the lifeless figure in the crimson robe, doubled across the marble

altar. In the foreground lay the battered body of Charley Tong Sin, but

they had eyes only for the tragedy of the altar. They stood dumfounded,

like men in the presence of something incredible.

At length the boldest shuffled forward. The others followed timidly.

They appeared terrified in the extreme. It was as though they had

believed their master to be invulnerable. And he was dead. Possibly

they conjectured that he had been slain by an agency more than mortal.

The group of Chinese clustered about the altar, whispering, regarding

the body of Chung. Apparently they had not bethought themselves of the

foreigner who was held a prisoner in the temple.

O’Shea rose in his shadowy corner and moved wearily past the Painted

Joss. It was better to have the thing finished. He came upon the

Chinese like an apparition. Their wits were so fuddled that the sight

of him had the effect of another shock. If he had been powerful enough

to slay the mighty Chung, then the demons were his allies. Perceiving

their dazed condition, he forebore to shoot, and advanced abreast of

the altar. The path to the door-way was clear, but he had not the

strength to make a run for it. The hope of life, miraculously restored

to him, was in the possibility that they might stand and gaze at him a

little longer.

He had walked a half-dozen steps farther when one of the crowd yelled.

The spell was broken. They raced after him like wolves. He turned and

steadied himself and pulled trigger until the revolver was empty.

The onset was checked and thrown into bloody confusion. O’Shea had

summarily convinced them that whether or not the demons were in league

with him, the devil was in this ready weapon of his.

They were no longer massed between him and the exit, and for the moment

the advantage undeniably belonged to this mysterious, devastating

foreigner.

He stumbled over the broken timbers of the doors and was in the blessed

daylight, the temple behind him. He would be overtaken ere he could

flee the ruined city, but he reloaded the revolver as he followed the

path at a staggering trot. The mob poured out of the temple, yelping

in high-keyed chorus. As a foot-racer the hapless Captain Michael

O’Shea was in excessively poor condition. In fact, it promised to be

the easiest kind of a matter to overtake him and leisurely pelt him to

death with bricks as soon as he should have expended his ammunition.

He swerved from the rough path and crawled to the top of a low ridge

of débris. Standing erect for a moment, he pitched forward and fell

against a bit of wall. His figure had been outlined against the sky,

and it was discerned in a fleeting glimpse by a scattered band of men

in khaki and linen clothes who were tramping the marsh. They raised a

shout and rushed toward the ruined city, converging until the force was

mobilized within a short distance of the prostrate O’Shea.

The Chinese mob, pursuing full-tilt, found itself confronting a score

and more of rifles which enthusiastically opened fire until the air

hummed with bullets. There was a hasty, unanimous retreat of the

followers of Chung to the temple and the adjacent buildings. Major

Bannister halted to bend over O’Shea and say:

“We thought you were drowned or bogged in the marsh. What sort of a

rumpus is this?”

“The Painted Joss,” murmured O’Shea. “I found it. Don’t bother with me.

Go to it and clean out the place.”

The adventurers, at last earning their wages, proceeded to make

things most unpleasant for the household of Chung. The resistance was

brief, and those who were not penned within the temple fled in panic

and sought cover in the marsh. They were taken by surprise, for the

community had found the visit of Captain O’Shea sufficient to engage

its attention. To him returned Major Bannister, hot and dusty, his

cheek bleeding from the cut of a Chinese sword, and smilingly announced:

“Bully good fun while it lasted. What shall I do with the devils we

cornered? Take them out and shoot them?”

“No. The boss of the works is dead. And I have a notion that _The Sect

of the Fatal Obligation_ died with him. Lug me to the temple, if ye

please. I’m all in, but ’tis my wish to see the whole wicked business

go up in smoke.”

Before the torch was applied, that experienced man of war, Major

Bannister, suggested that he had never seen a more promising place in

which to poke about for loot. The search amounted to nothing until it

occurred to the major to pull the Painted Joss from off its pedestal.

After much heaving and prying the great image fell crashing to the

pavement of the temple. Investigation revealed that underneath it were

several compartments accessible by means of cunningly fitted panels.

Many papers or documents were found, wrapped in silk, and it was

assumed that these were the records of the black deeds of Chung and his

organized murderers. They were thrown aside, to be bundled together and

taken to the boats.

It was the astute Major Bannister who smashed the bottom of one of

these compartments with a rifle-butt and rammed his hand through the

splintered hole. His groping fingers came in contact with closely

packed rows of metal bars. In this manner was discovered the wealth of

the temple, the blood-money stored and treasured by the infamous Chung,

the price of many assassinations.

The gold was in stamped ingots, the silver in the lumps or “shoes”

of the clumsy Chinese currency, and there were baskets of English

sovereigns, Mexican dollars, and a variety of the coinages which pass

over the counters of the money-changers of the Orient. Murder as a

business had paid well. _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_ was a

flourishing concern. The loot belonged to those who found it. They were

troubled by no scruples respecting the heirs of the departed Chung, nor

did they consider it their duty to surrender the spoils to the Chinese

government.

That night a conflagration reddened the ruins of the dead city of

Wang-Li-Fu. It was the pyre of the Painted Joss. And when the little

flotilla again moved up-river early next morning, a cloud of smoke rose

lazily in the still air. Captain Michael O’Shea was still alive, which

was rather surprising, for he had passed through experiences extremely

disturbing to a sick man. There was tonic, however, in the fact that he

had redeemed his failure, the expedition was no longer a sorry jest,

and the account of Bill Maguire had been squared.

He slept with tremendous earnestness through a night and a day, and

when he awoke it was to roar for food and to display the peevish temper

of a genuine convalescent. When off duty his comrades became absorbed

in the odd occupation of arranging piles of gold bars, silver “shoes,”

and minted coins on the deck of the little house-boat, like children

playing with blocks. They smiled a great deal and talked to themselves.

Captain O’Shea looked on with an air of fatherly interest. After all,

this happy family of his had made a prosperous voyage of it. Dreams

of rehabilitation cheered these broken wanderers. They would go home.

No more for them the misery, the heartache, the humiliation of the

tropical tramp. Their riches might slip through their fingers, but they

would make the most of golden opportunity. Like poor McDougal, they had

thrown all regrets away.

“’Tis share and share alike,” said O’Shea, “but there is a red-headed

sailor-man at anchor on a farm in Maine and I think he has a wife

somewheres. With your permission we will deal him a share of the

plunder. ’Twas poor Bill Maguire that gave us the tip.”

Unmindful of labor and hardship, this contented company slowly

journeyed to the head of navigation on the River of Ten Thousand Evil

Smells and then trudged overland while O’Shea rode in a covered chair

and sang old sea-chanties in a mellow voice. When, at length, the

English mission station was reached it was stretching the truth to call

him an invalid. The senior missionary, a gentle, very wise old man who

had lived for thirty years in the back country, heard the tale told

by these tanned, ragged travellers and was horrified that such things

should have existed. But he had news for them, and it was thus that he

supplied a missing fragment of the puzzle of Bill Maguire:

“The man came here and we took care of him. But there was no finding

out how he had been so frightfully hurt. He was dumb and stupid.

Later I met a native boatman who had found him on the river-bank near

Wang-Li-Fu. Evidently he had been thrown into the water as an easy way

to get rid of the body. Reviving a little, he splashed his way ashore

or the tide left him there. He stayed with us until he was fairly

strong and one morning he was gone.”

“And did he set the house afire?” inquired O’Shea.

“Why, there were two accidental fires in the compound at that time,

but we laid it to the carelessness of the kitchen coolies,” was the

innocent reply.

“It was Bill Maguire, all right,” declared O’Shea. “Now, will ye be

good enough to look over the Chinese documents we found hid away under

the Painted Joss?”

The missionary pored over the papers for several hours. And his

painstaking translation revealed all that O’Shea cared to know

concerning the operations of _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_. It had

worked in secret to remove enemies for a price. If a merchant wished

a business rival obliterated, if an official found others in his way,

if it was advantageous to create a vacancy in some other quarter, the

murder guild directed by the departed Chung would transact the affair,

smoothly, without bungling. And those who knew and would have disclosed

the secret were frightened into silence by the sight of the brand that

was called _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_.

“It will interest you to learn, as an American, Captain O’Shea,” said

the missionary, “that among these documents is a list of persons

proscribed or sentenced to be slain. The most conspicuous name I

find to be that of the Chinese ambassador to the United States, His

Excellency Hao Su Ting. It is probable that this terrible fate would

have awaited him upon his return to his own country.”

“They potted his brother,” exclaimed O’Shea. “And he was sick with fear

of the thing, for I talked it over with him meself. Well, he can thank

Bill Maguire for letting him die in his bed when his proper time comes.”

Three weeks later Captain O’Shea sat at his ease upon the piazza of the

Grand Hotel, that overlooks Yokohama Bay. He was thinner than when he

had put to sea in the _Whang Ho_ steamer, but he appeared to find the

game of life quite worth while. It was his pleasure to enjoy the tame

diversions of a tourist before boarding a mail-boat for the long run

home to San Francisco. He smiled as he reread a letter written in the

crabbed fist of that zealous agriculturist, Johnny Kent, who had this

to say: