The light overhead increased, and as his eyes wandered here and there he could see bright cracks and rifts in the deck and high up in the sides, all evidences that he had found a sanctuary in some dilapidated, half-rotten junk which had been drawn close inshore ready for breaking up, its services being evidently at an end.
The morning grew brighter, and fresh sounds of plashing came near, tempting him to creep through the half-darkness to where the first gleams of the morning sun streamed through a rift in the side. Upon reaching it and applying his eyes, he found that he could command a good view of the river to right, left, and across, with the water becoming animated, boats large and small passing and repassing, the opposite shore waking up, and smoke beginning to rise from the house-boats moored close to the bank, and all the morning business of a great city appearing around.
If only the old junk were left alone, Stan felt that he might lie in hiding till night. There might be a possibility of his marking down some boat, and as soon as it was dark wading or swimming to it, when, if he could loosen it from its moorings and secure the mast, sails, or oars, escape would be simplicity itself. But, as the lad argued, there were so many ifs.
“But I oughtn’t to grumble,” he muttered. “I have got out of the prison, and I am here in a capital hiding-place where nobody is likely to come.”
Just about the time when he had come to this conclusion a waft of some peculiar odour from food being cooked seemed to float down the river and reach his nostrils, producing a sensation that was repeated again and again with increasing violence, till the poor fellow uttered a low moan of misery.
“If this goes on I shan’t be able to bear it,” he muttered; and then, setting his teeth hard, he groaned out through them, “I must—I must. Oh, what a coward I am! I’ve only got to wait till it’s dark, and then surely I can land and find something somewhere.”
But even as he tried to console himself with these words, he felt more and more hopeless, not seeing for a moment where he was to search, and all the time suffering more and more keenly.
For in all directions smoke was rising from the hundreds upon hundreds of house-boats that lined the shores, as well as from the many one-storied houses clustering together, and a strange mingling of the most maddening scents came floating around—literally maddening to one whose sole sustenance for many hours had been a couple of bananas and a piece of cake.
It was all so horribly civilised, too. The fugitive was in far-away Asia, but his nostrils were assailed with the steam of fragrant tea, freshly roasted coffee, newly baked bread, frying fish, and appetising bacon.
No wonder the starving lad called it maddening as he crouched down in the darkness and tried to think of other things.