“Can you use a sword, Stan?”
“Yes, father. You know I had fencing lessons.”
“Bah!” muttered his elder impatiently. “Poking about a square skewer with a leather-covered button at the end! I mean a service sword—cut and thrust. There! you must try. Catch hold and come along. Loaded, mind.”
The last words were uttered as the boy felt the butt of a revolver thrust into one hand, the handle of a sword into the other.
“Tread softly, boy,” whispered his father. “This way.”
Stanley Lynn felt more confused than ever, for he had only returned from England two days before, after six years’ absence and work at a big school; and the home he had now come to in Hai-Hai was a very much larger and more important place than that he had quitted at Canton years before. Everything had seemed strange, even by day, in the big, roomy, lightly built place connected with the great warehouse and wharf, while the lower part of the former building was used as offices and sampling-rooms. He had not half mastered the intricacies of the place by the previous evening, while now in the darkness—woke up from a deep sleep—everything seemed puzzling in the extreme.
“Got him?” said a familiar voice out of the darkness.
“Yes.”
“That’s right. Don’t be alarmed, Stan. The rascals are breaking into the office, but I think if we keep up a little revolver-shooting they’ll soon go back to their boats.”
“Eh?” cried Stanley’s father. “Then they came in boats?”