Chapter Thirty One.
“One Piecee can do!”
We could not talk together, for the very good reason that our mouths were gagged, nor could we see each other now, poor consolation as that would have been; although possibly a friendly wink from Ned might have cheered me up a bit under the circumstances, the idea preying on my mind that it was owing to my fault in persuading him to enter into the treacherous ambuscade that we had been thus entrapped.
But whatever Anstruther’s reflections might have been I had no means of knowing, as our bearers trotted onwards with his bamboo palanquin abreast of mine, both of our craft making good headway; the artful, yellow-hatted old scoundrel who had so successfully planned our capture bringing up the rear of the procession and grunting away at a fine rate behind.
He was mounted on a diminutive pony, which he straddled in a clumsy fashion, his legs almost touching the ground; while a parasol he held aloft in one hand nearly poked my eyes out when he came up every now and then alongside my cage, to see that I was there all right and had not wriggled out of my bonds since his last inspection.
If I could not speak, like the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens, I thought the more; all sorts of curious fancies continually coming into my head as we were thus borne along.
For one thing, I was not in the least frightened about my fate; for, as the old chap had not killed us at the first start off, it occurred to me that he had merely taken us prisoners with the view of getting a heavy ransom for us by-and-by, being led to the belief that we might be important personages on account of his seeing us followed after we landed from the gunboat, by the cutter’s crew.
Our stalwart bluejackets appeared to his little, rat eyes, no doubt, like the retinue of a mandarin with a peacock’s feather in his tail at the least; and this impression had, probably, been confirmed by the fact of our being such young fellows, which was a proof of what “big” men we would be when grown-up! Thinking this, I was in no ways alarmed. On the contrary, I chuckled greatly when I recollected what a widely different value the captain or first lieutenant would attach to a couple of harum-scarum midshipmen to the estimation in which this wily old kidnapper evidently held us; glorying in the great sell awaiting him when he came in his bland innocence to exchange our poor carcases for hard cash!
This anticipation so pleased me, that I began to interest myself in the scenes through which we passed to our as yet unknown destination.
The one great drawback to my enjoyment of this amusement was that there was precious little to look at, the country being fiat and dreary in the extreme, and consisting apparently of an endless plain, dotted here and there with heaps of earth, like mud-pies magnified, with the black Peiho serpentining through it in its snake-like curves.
Such are the surroundings of Tientsin, which means “A heavenly spot!”
Burying places we met with at regular intervals, for we could easily tell what they were from the ends of the square box coffins peeping out of the soil that only half covered them, while the bones of the departed frequently covered the earthy track our conductors traversed, which it would have been a vile libel to have called a road.
Occasionally, we came near a collection of huts, with conical roofs resembling the form of the extinguisher usually employed in connection with a bedroom candlestick.
“Yellow hat,” however, would not allow the palanquin bearers to stop at any of these villages, as I supposed the huts represented, our procession not coming to a halt until late in the afternoon; when, on arriving at a place which, in addition to these huts had a pagoda or josshouse, the old rascal grunted a little louder than usual to our bearers and they set down our cages in front of a card-house of the same description as that at Tientsin where we had been so nicely “taken in and done for,” as Macan would have expressed it in his Irish vernacular.
The gags were then dragged, in no very gentle way, from our mouths, and our hands and feet untied, and the leader of the party, in a more pig-like squeak than ever, ordered us to come out of our very uncomfortable quarters.
We thought he meant this at least, from the violent gesticulations he made, waving his arms wildly and hopping about as if he were a parched pea on a griddle; for, of course, we could not make out his gibberish though he squealed and grunted at us at a fine rate!
“I suppose he means us to get out,” said Ned Anstruther, glad to be able to use his tongue again; “but I can’t, I’m so cramped.”
“Nor can I, old fellow,” I rejoined. “I’m as stiff as a boiled lobster and couldn’t move to salute the admiral if he came along.”
“I wish to goodness he would,” cried Ned. “Ay, and with a file of marines at his back, too. Wouldn’t I like to shoot this treacherous old scoundrel, ay, or string him up to the top of that pagoda there!”
“So would I too, Ned,” I replied heartily. “But, I don’t think the yellow rascal means us any harm; at all events, not at present, old fellow. See, he’s actually getting us something to eat, I think.”
“Some nasty mess or other, no doubt,” growled Ned, chafing one of his legs and then stretching it out. “By Jove, though, I’m beginning to get some life in my limbs again, but these blessed cords they tied us with stopped my circulation. Here goes!”
So saying, he made an attempt to scramble up, and the old fellow, who had approached us with a big bowl of rice in both hands, put this down on the ground and gave my companion a lift, afterwards extending the same courtesy to myself.
We then stretched our cramped legs a bit; and, presently, sat down on the outside of our bamboo cages, instead of inside them, being comparatively free.
But, from the way in which the bearers who had carried us, and some other fellows with bows and arrows and broad-bladed knives in their belts, closed round us at the word of command from “yellow hat,” we would have fared ill had we attempted just then to give him and his retainers “leg-bail.”
We saw this at a glance; so, making the best of a bad business, we commenced pegging into the rice the old fellow now handed us, which we did not find at all bad eating.
It was very well cooked, and besides had a bit of salt fish of some sort on the top of the bowl, which we smelt at intervals, being too small to bite, so as to make the main contents of the dish more appetising.
“Not bad,” commented Ned, after taking a preliminary mouthful of it for a taste, delving out the rice with his fingers, no spoon or fork being provided, and the chopsticks à la Chinoise furnished with the bowl being useless to us from our not being accustomed to their proper manipulation. “Better served up, too, than we ever got on board!”
“Yes; I’ve tasted worse,” said I. “They’ve cut us rather short with the fish, though, Ned. I think they might have served out enough for a fellow to put his teeth through.”
“Perhaps the old chap can’t afford it, you know, Jack; and yet, he doesn’t look badly off. That hat of his would fetch something in an old curio shop, and so would his breeches too. By Jove, they’re big and baggy enough for a Dutchman twice his size.”
At this we both laughed, whereupon the old chap, thinking we did so in high appreciation of his viands, smiled and nodded, patting his fat stomach and saying in his guttural tones, “Bono, Johnny, goot—goot!”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Ned, quite startled. “You speak English?”
“Mi one piecee can do,” replied the other, with a broader smile that made him look quite venerable, the deceitful old wretch! “No goodee number one chop!”
“Oh, you can speak it well enough,” replied Ned, as our friend said this in “Pijin English,” implying that although he could manage a little of our language he was not a first-rater at it. “What wantchee can do, my one two?”
Ned pointed at the same time towards me, and then indicated himself, requesting in this idiotic jargon to be informed of our fate.
“Yellow hat’s” reply was not of a reassuring character, although he uttered no word. What he did was, to draw the forefinger of his dirty hand across his throat in the most unpleasant manner.
Ned shuddered at this; and, I confess, so did I. Seeing the effect his gesture had produced, the old chap, smiling affably, proceeded to justify the extreme course he had suggested.
“Yang-kei-tze catchee one Chinaman, one piecee shootee chop chop,” he argued, on the retaliatory principle, which, of course, held good in war, although no comfort to us at the moment. “Chinaman one piecee catchee Yang-kei-tze, mi takee Pekin.”
“And what will be done with us there?” The old scoundrel answered this question in the same mode as before; his action being if possible even more expressive.
“I say, Ned, show him a dollar or two,” I said, not liking his humbly suggestive way of stating that we were going to be taken to Pekin and there beheaded—at least that was what I gathered from the conversation. “Perhaps he’ll be open to silver reason if we argue on the other side of the question?”
Ned pulled a handful of money out of his pocket, at the sight of which the old chap’s little eyes glistened and he smiled more genially; but, he shook his head.
“No one piecee take can do,” he said sorrowfully, as if it went to his heart to refuse it. “Talkee, talkee no bono, mi takee Pekin chop chop, Yang-kei-tze catchee one piecee by by.”
He then turned away to give some order to the men, and Ned seized the opportunity of his being out of earshot to speak to me.
“I think he’s open to argument, Jack,” he said encouragingly, seeing I looked rather glum at the prospect before us now, although I had been so light-hearted before, not thinking things were going to turn out so badly as they now appeared. “The old chap, as you can see for yourself, with all those soldiers about him, must keep up his reputation as a bloodthirsty foe to all foreigners; or else, he’d lose his billet as a mandarin and have that rum old tile of his taken from him! But, he tipped me a wink, Jack; didn’t you see him? That means business, and tells me as plain as a pikestaff that he’s open to be bribed to get us off by-and-by, although he is forced to take us first to Pekin. They want as many of us as they can catch, you know, to show to their blessed emperor as a proof of their having licked us again, and ‘wiped out’ all the red devils—that’s what Yangkei-tze, means, ‘red devils,’ though it sounds very like Yankee! Ain’t that so, old chappie, and don’t you agree?”
He jingled the money which he still held in his hand, addressing his last remark to our friend “yellow hat,” who had approached us again after conferring with his men; and, catching the sound, he nodded his head and gave Ned a perceptible wink, as if he thoroughly understood what he had said, and would be our friend—for a consideration!
The bearers then coming up, the old chap motioned us to take our places in the bamboo cages, although he did not offer to gag or bind us again; when, on our being seated, our travelling prisons were raised to the men’s shoulders and we resumed our journey.