"Can you sail the junk?" he asked, speaking for the first time in English.
"I think so," said Frank. "In any case, if we can but get her out into mid-stream, she will drift upon the current."
"That is what I would wish," said Ling. "Let me drift into the other world. Forty years since, I was born upon the turbulent waters of the Hoang-Ho. Let me breathe my last upon the tranquil Pe-kiang. One is inclined to believe," he continued, "that destiny is expressed in symbols. The Hoang-Ho is the most boisterous, violent and unmanageable river in all the thirteen provinces of this celestial land. And my life has been such, in very truth. I have lived by violence, and now I die a death by violence. But--I know not why--I die calmly, in peace with all men and my Maker. I think that, perhaps, the bad that was within me has gone out of me with the brute strength that was mine, and the good that was within me has taken possession of my soul, to conduct me to the expansive arch of heaven. And now, that I may rest in peace, bring me a pillow for my head. You cannot move me--I am too heavy. Besides, I desire to remain here, to regard the stars."
Searching the junk, they found several cushions, and these they disposed so that the man could lie in greater ease. And Mr Waldron, who--as a man who had lived much of his life in the wilds--had some little experience in surgery and medicine, attended to Ling's wound, washing away the blood and folding another and a cleaner bandage.
And then they loosed the junk from her moorings, and with difficulty at last succeeded in getting the ship clear of the creek. She at once swung round with the current. And when they lowered what little canvas she carried, the ship drifted down the river, with Sir Thomas Armitage at the tiller.
On this account progress was very slow, and they had not progressed many miles when the red dawn began to appear in the east. They passed villages upon both banks of the river, surrounded by flooded ricefields, purple in the dawn. As the light grew, they were able to perceive distant wooded hills, with ancient temples and pagodas built upon their slopes.
They had taken turn and turn about at the work of steering, relieving one another every half-hour, so that there were always two of them in attendance upon Ling. He did not speak again until the sun had risen, when he complained that the light was trying to his eyes.
As he had said, he was far too heavy to be moved. They constructed an awning above him, a small sail tied to the mast. He thanked them with Chinese courtesy, and then closed his eyes again, as if he desired to sleep.
A little after, they rounded a bend of the river, and found that they had gained the Pe-kiang, or North River, which joins the West River a little above Canton. And there, lying in mid-stream, like a watch-dog at the mouth of its kennel, was a British gunboat, her paint glistening in the sun, the great muzzle of a 4.5 gun directed at the bows of the junk. They could see the gunners, each man in his place, standing ready to fire.
The junk drifted nearer and nearer to the man-of-war. They could see the commander on the bridge. He shouted to them through a megaphone, ordering them to heave to and drop their anchors, or else he would open fire. When he saw that there were Europeans on board, however, who were free to do what they liked, and that the only Chinaman visible was a man stretched at full length upon the deck beneath an awning, he threw back his head with an exclamation of surprise.