Volume One--Chapter Three.
The Sampan.
Towards six bells in the morning watch the intense violet sky of the east began to pale into those shades of green and grey which note the departure of night, the bright twinkling stars that had up to then lit up the firmament disappearing one by one as day broke. Then, rapidly, streaks of warm, salmon-tinted clouds rose across the eastern horizon, shot with bright golden gleams of fire, making the water of the Pearl River glow as if with life, and lighting up the distant house-tops and pagodas of Canton that could be seen far away from Jardyne Point; and then, up danced the sun from beyond the paddy fields, mounting higher and higher in the heavens each moment with majestic strides, as if he wanted to get his day’s work done early, so as to get a siesta in the afternoon!
With the rising of the sun, all is bustle and excitement on board the Hankow Lin; for the captain before turning in had told Mr Scuppers that they were to sail at daybreak.
“Whee—eo! Whee—eo! Whee—ee!” The boatswain’s shrill whistle was heard piercing through every nook and cranny of the ship.
“Tumble up, there! Tumble up! All hands up anchor!” shouted out Bill Martens in stentorian tones that supplemented the call of his whistle. “Now, you Lascar beggars, show a leg, will you? All hands on deck, and up anchor. Here, look alive, serang! Man the capstan-bars, and be sharp with it. Cheerily, men; cheerily ho! Walk her up to her anchor. Now she rides—heave, men, with a will. Belay!”
The ship by this time has been brought up, with all the slack of the cable in; and the chief mate now lends his voice to add to the bustle and movement of the scene.
“’Way aloft there, men; loose topsails; let fall. There! Now, serang, heave with a will! heave with a will! Now it’s free; heave away, my hearties!” and the anchor was run up to the bows with a will, and secured with tackles; when, the ship’s head being now loosed from her hold of the ground, she began to pay off, with her bows dancing up and down, as if she were bidding a polite adieu to the Celestial Empire and all its belongings.
“Man the topsail halliards; up with the jib; loosen those courses; set the spanker sharp, will you? Hurrah! there she fills!” The sails bellied out and drew; and the ship bore round to her course, and began to move, at first slowly, and then more swiftly, down the river, south and west, on her way towards England—homeward-bound, as it is joyously phrased.
A regular staunch clipper is she—the good ship Hankow Lin; one of the best of the old-fashioned tea-traders that as yet spurned the modern innovation of the Suez Canal, and despised, in the majesty of their spreading canvas, the despicable agency of steam! A sound, teak-built, staunch, ship-rigged vessel of 1200 tons register, and classed A1 at Lloyd’s for an indefinite number of years.
Captain Morton—a bluff old sea-dog, with a jovial red face, and crisp, wiry grey hair, and mutton-chop whiskers that projected on either side as if electrified—was standing on the poop to windward, with the first mate, Mr Scuppers, and the passenger, “Mr Meredith,” looking up aloft at the nimble topmen, who were adding acre to acre to the sail-surface of the ship, and pluming her snowy pinions with a pull here and a shake there. Mr Sprott, the second mate, was to leeward of the helmsman; the boatswain on the forecastle, monarch of all he surveyed in that department; and little Jack Harper, the middy—a special favourite both with the officers and sailors—looking on amidships at the gang of Malays, who were hauling away at halliards, and slackening sheets, and curling ropes, in a more slipshod and leisurely way than regular jack tars are wont.
Jack Harper called out to the serang Kifong to make him rouse up his men, but he was nowhere to be seen. Presently, he perceived him bending over the side amidships, partly concealed by the shrouds, and apparently talking to some one overboard. Wondering what was up, Jack cautiously approached him without being observed, and peered over the side too. His face brightened up with excitement as he heard the sounds of men’s voices speaking in Chinese rapidly, and then he listened with rapt attention for a minute. Only for a minute, however, as the serang, turning rapidly round, saw him, and, calling out something which he could not catch, a sampan, or native boat, quickly sheered off from the vessel, and, impelled by two rowers, darted off shore wards; the serang, with a look of unconsciousness at Jack, sauntering back to his gang, as if he were only doing the most natural thing in the world.
The captain perceived the sampan the moment it left the ship’s side, and hailed Jack.
“Hullo! What was that boat doing alongside?”
“Can’t say, sir,” said Jack, touching his cap. “I suppose some of the Lascars’ friends bidding them good-bye!”
“That so?” said the captain. “It isn’t discipline, but I suppose we can’t help it;” and he resumed his conversation with the passenger and Mr Scuppers.
By and by, when the serang and his gang had gone forward again, to unbit the cable chain and cat and fish the anchor, Jack went up on the poop to the captain.
“Beg your pardon, Cap’en Morton,” he said, “but I think that Malay chap is up to something; can I speak to you privately?”
“Oh, never mind Mr Meredith,” said the captain; “we are all friends here; speak out.”
“Well, you know, sir,” said Jack, diffidently—he didn’t like spinning a yarn, as he called it, before strangers—“that I understand a little Chinese; and I caught something of what the serang was saying to those two beggars in the boat.”
“Did you?” said the captain and Mr Meredith, the passenger, almost together, eagerly. “What was it? what did the rascal say?”
“You may well say rascal, sir,” said Jack. “For though I did not hear all their conversation, from what I gathered I think they’re up to some mischief. I first heard the chap in the boat say, ‘And how about the passengers?’ or something like that as far as I could make out; and the serang said, ‘There’s only one come on the ship.’”
The captain nudged Mr Meredith here, and the first mate, and all three chuckled.
“And then the man in the boat said, ‘You are certain there are not more aboard?’ And the serang answered, ‘No, only that one passenger’—‘strange man,’ he called him—‘and twelve men besides the boy officer,’—I suppose meaning me, sir. And then the man in the boat, who seemed to have some authority over the serang, said, ‘In about ten days, if the wind is good or fair; and don’t be in a hurry, but wait for the signal!’ and then the Malay chap turned and saw me, and the boat shoved off.”
“Very good, Harper,” said the captain; “we’ll keep an eye on him, never fear;” and then, as Jack went off again to his post he turned to Mr Meredith: “I confess that I was wrong, and you and the admiral right, sir!” he said. “And now we must contrive to outwit these yellow devils, and as they’re half-Chinese and ought to know, show them how to catch a Tartar!”
“Ay,” said Mr Meredith, laughing, “we’ll give them a lesson they’ll never forget, too, while we’re about it! But, captain, we have plenty of time before us—ten days or more, just as I calculated; and all we have to do now is to look out sharp for squalls in the meantime.”
“Right, sir,” said Captain Morton, “we’ll all have to look out sharp, for they’re treacherous rascals at the best, and these seem to be the worst! Keep your weather eye open, Scuppers, and give Sprott a hint—although not a word, mind you, to the men yet, with the exception of Bill Martens, who can be trusted to bide his time, as he knows already as much as ourselves. As to little Jack Harper, he’s a ’cute boy, and is not likely to forget what he has heard.” And there the conversation ended and the subject dropped.
All that day the Hankow Lin was working her way down the river from Canton, which lies some eighty miles from its mouth; and at nightfall the ship again anchored, the navigation being somewhat intricate and the breeze dying away; but next morning it was up anchor and away again with everything hoisted that could draw and the wind right astern, the vessel making such good progress through the water that long before mid-day she had passed through the Bocca Tigris, or “tiger’s mouth” passage, and was out in the open ocean.
The nor’-east monsoon, which blows in the China seas as regularly as clockwork from October to April, and is the great trade-wind of the tea-ships, had nearly blown out its course; but still, for a time it was all in the Hankow Lin’s favour, and she went through the water at a fine rate. Although she was pretty well laden, and was rather deep for a vessel of her size, she walked along as if, as the sailors said, the girls at home had got hold of the tow-rope; and when the log was hove at noon she was going twelve knots with all sail set—not a bad pace that for a trader; but, in the old days, before steam transformed the trade through the Red Sea, these tea-ships were built for speed as well as freight room.
Sundown came, and the great orb of day set in a crescent of ruby light, making the sea like a gorgeous pantomime sea of molten gold as far as the eye could reach; and still the wind held up fair and strong, and the vessel careered over the expanse of ocean, that looked like living fire, without slackening her rate of progress, rising and falling to the waves with pendulum-like rhythm. And now night came on with its azure sky, sprinkled with innumerable stars all glorious with scintillating light, and the ship preserved the even tenor of her way; morning came again with its freshness of roseate hues and golden sun-risings, and purple mists, and transparent haze; and yet, onward—onward, without pause—she flew upon the wings of the wind like a great white dove released from some fowler’s snare and panting for the untrammelled freedom of the wide wide sea.
So day after day passed, and everything went on in regular routine on board, without any incident of note occurring to break the monotony of the voyage, the English sailors keeping to themselves, and the Malays apart, without either mixing or speaking with the others save when the duties of the ship called them into temporary association.
Kifong, the serang, however, they could see was wide-awake, and observant of all that went on around him. He was particularly anxious about the saloon and the passenger: and was continually trying to interrogate Snowball as to what went on within the privileged retreat, to which none else of the crew were admitted. What struck him more than anything else was the amount of food which the black cook was preparing, and carrying from the galley into the cabin.
“What for you takee so muchee prog, black-man, in dere for?” he said one day to Snowball, much to that individual’s indignation at the reference to his colour, which he always most studiously ignored.
“What for, mister yaller man? Why, for eat, sure!”
The Malay’s eyes gleamed like a serpent’s, and he showed his teeth like a snarling dog.
“Five men no eatee that much prog,” he said in an angry tone. “You tell one lie, black-man.”
“Lie yourself, yaller nigger,” said the darky. “You no tink dat four officers and de passenger gen’leman all eat muchee food; very good appeta-tites havee.”
The serang walked away from Snowball with a strong expression of doubt in his face, and ever afterwards seemed to bear a particular ill-will to the darky, laying traps to trip him up on his passage to and fro between the galley and the cabin when heavily laden with dishes for Mr Meredith’s gigantic meals.