“You wantee Ching?” came in the familiar highly-pitched voice from forward. “You wantee Ching go buy new boatee?”
He came hurrying aft, nearly tumbling once; while, left to his own power alone, the coxswain redoubled his efforts to keep down the water, and the tin baler went scoop scroop, scoop scroop, and splash splash, as he sent the water flying.
But the dark, angry expression of Mr Brooke’s countenance repelled the Chinaman, and he stopped short and looked from one to the other in a pleading, deprecating way, ending by saying piteously—
“You no wantee Ching?”
Mr Brooke shook his head, and our interpreter went back over the thwarts, reseated himself, and began to bale again, with his head bent down very low.
“Give way, my lads,” said Mr Brooke, bearing hard on the tiller, and the boat began to bear round as he steered for the landing-place a quarter of a mile away.
I looked up at him inquiringly, and he nodded at me.
“We can’t help it, Herrick,” he said; “if we stop afloat with the boat in this condition we shall have a serious accident. But we shall lose the junks.”
“Oh!” I ejaculated, “and after all this trouble. We had been so successful too. Couldn’t we repair the boat?”
“If we could run into a good boat-builder’s we might patch it up, but we can do nothing here.”