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CHAPTER XXVIII
A MYSTERY IS SOLVED, AND A THIEF GETS AWAY
Innumerable sampans were plying up and down the river, some with masts and some without, and great junks with carved sterns lay side by side so closely that their sails formed a patchwork as many-colored as Joseph's coat. There were West River small craft with arched deck-houses, which had beaten their way precariously far up and down the coast; tall, narrow sails from the north, and web-peaked sails on curved yards from the south; Hainan and Kwangtung trawlers working upstream with staysails set, and a few storm-tossed craft with great holes gaping between their battens. All were nameless when I saw them for the first time, and strange; but in the days that followed I learned them rope and spar.
Vessels from almost every western nation were there, too—bluff-bowed Dutch craft with square-headed crews, brigantines from the Levant, and ships from Spain, England, and America.
The captains of three other American ships in port came aboard to inquire about the state of the seas between the Si-Kiang and the Cape of Good Hope and shook their heads gravely at what we told them. One, an old friend of Captain Whidden, said that he knew my own father. "It's shameful that such things should be—simply shameful," he declared, when he had heard the story of our fight with the Arab ship. "What with Arabs and Malays on the high seas, Ladronesers in port—ay, and British men-of-war everywhere!"
He went briskly over the side, settled himself in the stern-sheets of his boat, and gave us on the quarter-deck a wave of his hand; then his men rowed him smartly away down-stream.
"Ay, it is shameful," Roger repeated. He soberly watched the other disappear among the shipping, then he turned to Mr. Cledd. "I shall go ashore for the day," he said. "I have business that will take considerable time, and I think that Mr. Lathrop had better come too, and bring his books."
As we left the ship we saw Mr. Cledd observing closely all that went forward, and Roger gravely nodded when I remarked that our new mate knew his business.
At the end of some three weeks of hard work we had cleared the hold, painted and overhauled the ship inside and out, and were ready to begin loading at daylight on a Monday morning. However great was Mr. Johnston's proclivity to get "wrought up," he had proved himself an excellent man of business by the way he had conducted our affairs ashore when once he put his hand to them; and we, too, had accomplished much, both in getting out the cargo and in putting the ship in repair. We had stripped her to her girt-lines, calked her, decks and all, from her hold up, and painted her inside and out. She was a sight to be proud of, when, rigged once more, she swung at her anchorage.