In petty spite, the fellow had committed himself, along with the rest of us, to privation at the very least. Yet he had a defense of a kind, contemptible though it was, and Roger let him go.
It was a weary voyage; but all things have an end, and in ten days we had left Helen Shoal astern. Now we saw many junks and small native craft, which we viewed with uncomfortable suspicion, for though our cannon were double-charged and though loaded muskets were stacked around the mizzenmast, we were very, very few to stand off an attack by those yellow demons who swarmed the Eastern seas in the time of my boyhood and who, for all I know, swarm them still.
There came at last a day when we went aloft and saw with red eyes that ached for sleep hills above the horizon and a ship in the offing with all sails set. A splendid sight she was, for our own flag flew from the ensign halyards, and less than three weeks before, any man of us would have given his right hand to see that ship and that flag within hail; but now it was the sight of land that thrilled us to the heart. Hungry, thirsty, worn out with fatigue, we joyously stared at those low, distant hills.
"Oh, mah golly, oh, mah golly!" the cook cried, in ecstasy, "jest once Ah gits mah foots on dry land Ah's gwine be de happies' nigger eveh bo'n. Ah ain' neveh gwine to sea agin, no sah, not neveh."
"Ay, land's good," Davie Paine muttered, "but the sea holds a man."
Blodgett said naught. What dreams of wealth were stirring in his head, I never knew. He was so very pale! He more than any one else, I think, was exhausted by the hardships of the voyage.
Roger, gaunt and silent, stood with his arms crossed on the rail. He had eaten almost nothing; he had slept scarcely at all. With unceasing courage he had done his duty by day and by night, and I realized as I saw him standing there, sternly indomitable, that his was the fibre of heroes. I was proud of him—and when I thought of my sister, I was glad. Then it was that I remembered my father's words when, as we walked toward Captain Whidden's house, we heard our gate shut and he knew without looking back who had entered.
We came into the Canton River, or the Chu-Kiang as it is called, by the Bocca-Tigris, and with the help of some sailing directions that Captain Whidden had left in writing we passed safely through the first part of the channel between Tiger Island and Towling Flat. Thence, keeping the watch-tower on Chuen-pee Fort well away from the North Fort of Anung-hoy, we worked up toward Towling Island in seven or eight fathoms.
A thousand little boats and sampans clustered round us, and we were annoyed and a little frightened by the gesticulations of the Chinese who manned them, until it dawned on us that they wished to serve as pilots. By signs we drove a bargain—a silver dollar and two fingers; three fingers; five fingers—and got for seven silver dollars the services of several men in four sampans, who took their places along the channel just ahead of us and sounded the depth with bamboo poles, until by their guidance we crossed the second bar on the flood tide, which providentially came at the very hour when we most needed it, and proceeded safely on up the river.
That night, too tired and weak to stand, we let the best bower go by the run in Whampoa Roads, and threw ourselves on the deck. By and by—hours later it seemed—we heard the sound of oars.