Before long, however, he had something else to take his attention, for a procession of nearly a dozen huge junks came slowly down the stream, each with its leering, painted eyes and gay dragon-like gilded ornamentations.
They were full of men armed with spear, fork, and trident, besides in parts bristling with matchlock barrels, while fore and aft the watcher could see that they carried big service-guns.
“Chinese men-of-war, full of soldiers!” Stan mentally exclaimed; but only to alter his opinion directly, for he had some little experience of the Government troops, and knew that the men all wore a grotesque kind of uniform.
They were not merchant-vessels, he thought, for though many of the trading-junks carried armed men, those before his eyes were out of all proportion.
“Could they be pirates?” he asked himself; but the sight of the leading junk casting anchor in midstream—an example followed by the rest—put an end to his surmises, for they were evidently at peace with the people in the vessels about them and on shore, many landing and mingling with the men who came to the sides and crowded in boats about the anchored vessels to supply them with food.
So much was going on all about him in this latter way that every now and then Stan felt that, come what might, he must land and seek for something, even if it was only a loaf of bread, to appease his hunger; but he knew it meant surrendering his liberty, for there would be a crowd round him at once; while doubtless by this time it was known that the foreign devil had escaped:
Stan watched till the morning was well advanced, longing for the night to come even though the sun was not yet at its height, while now a fresh agony assailed him; the rugged deck overhead began to get hotter and hotter, and the air about him suffocating, till at last he felt that at all hazards he must crawl up and trust to his not being seen while he crept to some spot where the remains of the lofty stern would act the double part of shading him from the sun and the curious eyes of those who passed.
There are limits to human endurance. Stan had not slept for above an hour during the previous night, and the bodily and mental toil he had gone through were tremendous. Hence it was that when his sufferings were at the worst, the faintness produced by his hunger and the heat more than he could bear, a half-delirious kind of insensibility stole over him—half-stupor, half-sleep—which tided him over the hottest part of the day, rendering him oblivious to all that was going on, till he awoke suddenly, to find, to his amazement, that it was twilight in his hiding-place, and on looking out through a rift he could see the river glowing like blood from the reflection of the sunset clouds.
In his excitement at the beauty of the scene which met his eyes lower down the river, he clapped his hands together, and had hard work to refrain from shouting aloud, merely standing gazing out through the open rift in the planking, and feeling giddy now in his joy.
Hunger and heat were forgotten, and he gazed out till his eyes grew dim and he had to make an effort to avoid yielding to the giddiness and swimming which attacked his head.