The Treasure Trail

by Frank Lillie Pollock

This time he would not repeat the mistakes of Bombay, and he wasted no time in adventures about the harbour. He called a sedan-chair and, having ascertained the names of the leading hotels of the city, he proceeded to investigate them one by one.

This search resulted in nothing but disappointment. There was no record of the man he sought at any hotel, neither at the expensive ones nor at the second and third class houses to which he presently descended. The mate might indeed have changed his name again on landing, though Elliott could think of no reason why he should do so. At the Eastern Navigation Company’s offices he ascertained that “Baker” had indeed landed at Victoria from the Prince of Burmah, but nothing was known of his present whereabouts.

Finally Elliott called upon the American consul, who could give him no help. He had never heard of the Clara McClay or her mate, but he turned out to be a Marylander, and he took Elliott to dinner with him, and made him free of the magnificent Hongkong Club, which is the envy of all the foreign settlements on the Eastern seas.

Under the sweeping punkahs in the vast, dusky rooms of the Club a temperature was maintained more approaching to coolness than Elliott had yet found in Victoria, and he lounged there for most of the evening, observing that a great part of the male white population of the city seemed to do likewise. It had come on to rain again, and the shuffle of bare feet in the streets mingled with the dismal swish of the downpour. He had been in Victoria for twenty-four hours, but he found himself bitterly weary already and oppressed with a certainty of failure.

Failure was indeed his lot during the next two weeks, though by an examination of the shipping-lists he assured himself that Baker had not sailed from Hongkong in the last two months, at least, not by any of the regular passenger steamers. It was out of all probability that he should have gone into the interior of China, and beyond possibility that he should have organized his wrecking expedition at so distant a port. Yet it was almost equally beyond the limits of likelihood that he should have come to Hongkong at all; and it was so beyond the bounds of sanity that he should voluntarily stay there during the rains that Elliott was forced to recognize that reason afforded no clue to the man’s movements.

To search for a stray straw in a haystack is trying to the temper, especially when the search must be conducted under the conditions of a vapour bath. But Elliott sweltered and toiled with a determination that certainly deserved more success than he attained. He acquired much knowledge that was new to him in that fortnight. He learned the names and flavours of many strange and cooling drinks; he learned to call a chair or a rickshaw when he had to go twenty yards; to hang his clothes in an airtight safe overnight to save them from the cockroaches; to scrape the nocturnal accumulation of mould from his shoes in the morning, and to look inside them for centipedes before he put them on. He learned to keep matches and writing-paper in glass jars, to forget that there was such a thing as stiff linen, and to call it a dry day if the rain occasionally slackened. But he learned nothing of what he was most anxious to discover. He could find no trace of either Baker or Burke at the hotels, at the consulates, at the Club, or along the waterfront, and no man in Victoria admitted to having ever heard of the Clara McClay.

From time to time he went up to the Peak, behind the city, to gain refreshment in that social and physical altitude. A house there cost fifty guineas a month, but every one had it who pretended to comfort or distinction. It was damp even on the Peak, but it was cool; Hongkong Bay and Victoria lay almost perpendicularly below, veiled by a steamy haze, but on the summit fresh breezes played among the China pines, and Elliott always took the tramcar down the zigzag road again with fresh courage for an adventure that was daily growing more intolerably unadventurous.

The same desire for coolness at any cost led him to take the coasting-boat for Macao on the second Saturday of his stay. He had heard much already of the dead Portuguese colony, the Monte Carlo of the China coast, maintaining its wretched life by the lottery, the fan-tan houses, and the perpetual issue of new series of postage stamps for the beguilement of collectors. But Macao is cooler than Hongkong, and those who cannot afford to live on the Peak find it a convenient place for the weekend, much to the benefit of the gaming-tables.

This being a Saturday, the boat was crowded with Victoria business men, who looked forward to a relief from the heat and the strain of the week in the groves and the fan-tan saloons of Macao. The relief began almost as soon as the roadstead was cleared, and a fresher breeze blew from a clearer sky, a cool east wind that came from green Japan. Elliott inhaled it with delight; it was almost as good as the Peak.

The verdant crescent of Macao Bay came in sight after a couple of hours’ steaming. At either tip of the curve stood a tiny and dilapidated block-house flying the Portuguese banner, and between them, along the water’s edge, ran a magnificent boulevard shaded by stately banyan-trees. The whole town appeared embowered in foliage; the white houses glimmered from among green boughs, and behind the town rose deeply wooded hills. Scarcely an idler sauntered on the Praya; a couple of junks slept at the decaying wharves, and deep silence brooded over the whole shore.