“Then, one night, when he had just about given up all hope of ever getting out of that place, four big, ugly-looking Chinamen came and tied a bag over his head and bound his hands and feet and loaded him into a boat and poled it down a river for hours and hours. They chattered a lot in Chinese but Father couldn’t understand them—his interpreter wasn’t with him when he went into the temple, and he doesn’t know what became of him. After a long, long time, Father heard sounds like men clambering aboard a vessel; but he thinks that the small boat he was in was towed for a long time behind some larger boat. He slept for part of the time, he says, and of course with that bag tied over his head he couldn’t see anything or even hear a great deal.
“The next thing he was really sure of was that his hands were free. By the time he got the bag off his head, there was an old Chinese junk—that’s a kind of a ship—way off in the distance, sailing away from him. He was alone in the boat but in one end of it he found a jar of water and some food. Also a long pole and a paddle. Of course he couldn’t reach bottom with the pole because he was out of the river by that time and quite far out at sea—in the Yellow Sea or possibly the Eastern Sea. You know how they run together along there; and he showed me what he thought might be the place, on the atlas in the library.
“Well, Father thought other boats might come along that way so he stayed right there for about six hours; but none did; so then he fastened the long pole up like a mast and ripped open that bag that had been over his head and used it for a sail. He found some bits of rope and string and some old fishing tackle stuffed into the bow of the boat and used them to tie his sail to the pole.
“He sailed wherever the wind took him and after awhile he was picked up by another Chinese junk. He thinks that the men aboard this one were smugglers or pirates or something. He tried to get them to take him to Shanghai or Hong Kong or some other Chinese port; but he was so ragged and dirty that probably they didn’t believe he’d be able to pay them what he promised—even if they understood him—and all he could get out of what they said was something about ‘Philippines.’
“But they never got to the Philippine Islands, if that’s where they were bound for. There was a typhoon—a sudden, terrible storm—and they were wrecked. My father and one very strong young Chinese sailor were thrown by the waves inside a coral reef that stuck up like kind of a fence, in a big half-circle. It made sort of a front yard to a small coral island and the water was smoother inside so they managed to swim ashore. But they were quite battered up at first and just crawled ashore on their hands and knees and fell asleep on the first dry spot.
“Their island was only a little one, just about big enough for two persons to live on. Fortunately there was a small spring of fresh water but it ran very slowly so that it took a long time to catch enough for a satisfying drink; and the young Chinaman was smart about catching fish and snaring sea birds and finding turtles’ eggs. There were lots of shell fish, too; and a box of rice washed ashore about the time they did and they saved some of that, so of course they didn’t starve.
“But they had to stay there for months and months and months; until another ship got blown out of her course and was almost wrecked on that coral fence outside their little island. As soon as that storm calmed down, the ship sent a boat ashore to explore the island. There were English sailors aboard her but the ship was going to Calcutta. Father says she was a rotten old tub but he and the Chinaman were glad to be rescued by anything. He wanted to go to England and he didn’t want to go to Calcutta; but after a day or two he had a good chance to be transferred to a much faster and safer ship bound for San Francisco so he took it. The Captain had to give him some clothes—he lost just about all he had left when he was swimming to the island. He sent a wireless to my grandmother from the American ship but for some reason she didn’t get it. And he didn’t telegraph her from San Francisco because he supposed she had received the wireless.”
“Tell us all the awful part of it,” pleaded Mabel. “Cannibals and tigers and things like that.”
“That’s one trouble with Father’s adventures,” complained Henrietta. “He doesn’t tell the ghastly details. He just gives the main facts. He must have been almost dead in that dungeon, he must have hated that nasty bag over his head, and he must have been almost drowned swimming ashore and almost scared to death in that typhoon; but he doesn’t say so. He did mention a shark in the lagoon—the Chinaman killed that with his knife. Of course I’ll be able to dig more out of him when there’s more time; but he won’t tell me the worst things; he never does.”
“I think,” said Jean, “you managed to get considerable.”