"Ask him if he knows Lake Tung-ting."
Mr. Dooley conveyed to the boy through Yen that he had been once to Chang-Yuan. The lake was wide in summer and he had been there at that time. He took pleasure in the service of the American Captain. But the Captain must be patient. He was a musk buyer, buying musk in western Szechuan on the Thibetan border. Two years ago he had saved five hundred taels and returned home to bury his family—nine persons counting his wife—all of whom had perished in the famine. The famine was very devastating. Then he married again one whom he had left at home. He allowed her ten taels a year. She could live on one pickle of wheat and she had the rest to spend as she liked. He preferred better the musk buying and returned. He gave the Captain much thanks.
"That is very interesting," said the boy. "You may go."
There was a tremendous rattling of chains along the sides, the steam winch began to click, and the two Chinamen vanished silently up the companionway. The boy leaned back in his wicker chair and gazed contemplatively about him at the shotgun and sporting rifle over the bookcase, the piles of paper-covered novels, the pointer dog coiled up on the transom, the lithographs fastened to the walls, and the photographs of his father and mother. He took another sip of whisky and water and, putting down the glass, thought of how proud his father would have been to see him in his first command. He had the happy consciousness of having done well, and he was going to make good—the Admiral had said so. He had had a bully time in the East so far, away ahead of what he had dreamed when at the Naval Academy. That winter at Newchwang, racing the little Manchurian ponies over the springy turf of the polo ground, shooting the big golden pheasants, wandering on leave through the country, stopping at the Chinese inns and taking chances among the Hanghousers. It had been great. Hong Kong had been great. It had been good fun to play tennis and drink tea with the pink-and-white-faced English girls. Well, he was off! His naval career had really begun. He lit another cheroot and strolled leisurely on deck to superintend the operation of heaving up the anchors.
Slowly the Dirigo floated away from the lights of Shanghai, felt her way cautiously down the Wompoa to Woosung and into the broad expanse of the Yang-tse. Anchored well out lay the Ohio black against the coming dawn. A band of crimson clouds swept the lowlands to the east and between them the tide flowed in an oily purple flood.
III
A heavy jar followed by a motionless silence awoke the boy at ten o'clock the next morning. The electric fans were still going and he had a thick taste in his mouth, but he had hardly time to notice these things before he dashed up the companionway and out upon the deck. To starboard the water extended to the horizon, to port a thin line of brown, a shade deeper in color than the water, marked the bank of the great river. Alongside helplessly floated a junk with a great gash in her starboard beam. She was loaded with crockery, and several bales of blue-and-white rice bowls had tumbled into the water, their contents bobbing about like a flock of clay pigeons. The boy saw instantly that owing to the fact that the junk was built in compartments she was in no danger of sinking, and could easily reach shore. Her captain, a half-naked man in a straw hat the size of a small umbrella, was chattering like a monkey at Charley Yen, and a Chinese woman, with a black-eyed baby of two years or thereabouts, sat idly in the stern evincing no particular interest in the accident. The man at the wheel explained that the junk had suddenly tacked. The boy felt in his pocket and, pulling out a Mexican dollar, tossed it to the junk man, who, having rubbed it on his sleeve and bitten it, began to chatter anew to Charley Yen.
"What does he say?" asked the boy.
"He say Captain belong number one man—he mucha tanks," answered Yen with a grin. What a waste! he added. The fellow had sailed on the feast day of Sai-Kao because on that day the Likin or native customs were closed. The gods had punished him. He had no complaint to make and had made none. As the Dirigo shot ahead the junk man sprang into the water and began rescuing his rice bowls. They passed no other junk that day, and the leaden sky did not change its shade. Save for the driving of the screw they might have been anchored in the midst of a coffee-colored ocean. Not even a bird relieved the eager search of the eye for relief from the immeasurable brown. The heat continued intense, and was even more unbearable than when the sun's rays created a fictitious contrast of shadow. Early in the afternoon Yen called the boy's attention to a couple of dolphins which were following them, racing first with the Dirigo and then with each other. Indeed, they were all three very much alike, and the majestic sweep and rush of the gray-white sides as they rose from the water inspired him with a sense of companionship. How far would they follow, these faithlessly faithful wanderers of the sea? At sunrise the next morning they picked up Nanking and the river gave more evidence of life, but they kept on and soon the city and its walls faded behind them. At noon they passed Wu-hu, at the same hour next day Kiukiang, and when the boy rose on the morning of the third day out, the black mass of crowded up-country junks on the water front of Hankow, swarming like mosquitoes or water flies about a stagnant pool, loomed into view. The river was full of sampans and fishing boats. The man from Shan-si, who had not spoken since the night in the cabin, raised his arm, and pointing to the pagoda repeated majestically to Yen the words of the ancient Chinese proverb: