But Pembroke had fainted, not died. Restoratives were applied, and presently he was ready to go on.
“Shall I listen to him now, or wait until to-morrow?” Dave asked the surgeon.
“The man will feel better if he talks himself out now,” advised the surgeon.
So Dave sat down again, while Pembroke rambled on:
“You see, Darrin, this isn’t the first time I have served Chinese officials among white men. I was in Nu-ping when that yarn got abroad that the missionaries had secretly looted that old temple and had removed millions in loot, burying the treasure secretly in the compound grounds of the mission at Nu-ping. You have no idea how such stories take hold in China. Doubtless, as a result of former rebellions and wars in China, the country is full of spots where fortunes have been buried for safety, with the people who buried the treasure killed off and the secret lost. I believed fully that the missionaries had buried such a treasure here at Nu-ping. The governor was sure of it, and so were his secretaries and the few other officials who had heard the story.”
“Then why didn’t the governor proceed officially and legally to have the mission grounds dug up and searched?” Dave asked.
“Don’t you understand?” cried Pembroke. “If the governor had done that and found the treasure, he would have had to turn it over to the central government. In that there would be mighty little graft for his excellency. Now, unless he did it in an open and official manner, the missionaries could resist and report his excellency to the central government. Being a governor in China in these days isn’t quite so fine a job as it was in the old days under the emperors. In those days the governor was called a viceroy—a ruler who served in the place of the monarch, and a mighty big chap a viceroy was. But these governors of the new breed are not such powerful chaps, though they still have many chances to steal without detection.
“But our yellow governor here at Nu-ping looked the situation over on all sides. He decided that it would be best to have a rebellion take place here on a small scale, have the missionaries killed or chased away, and then have his own men dig up the mission grounds and find the treasure. In the first place, our Nu-ping chap has about twelve thousand troops under his command. They could stop any rebellion that started around here. It was necessary to get the troops out of the way, so his excellency got ready to send them out of the way. He kept in town only the few troops you saw to-day. With so few soldiers he couldn’t be expected to stop a rebellion, could he?
“The more his excellency thought over the matter of the hidden millions in the mission grounds, the more he itched for them. Sin Foo sent for me, and I talked it over with them. The rebellion, once started, might last quite a while. We looked over the American fleet in Asiatic waters and decided that the ‘Castoga’ was the only naval craft of light enough draft to come up the Nung-kiang River to this point. His excellency wanted to take time for a leisurely rebellion, but knew that this gunboat would be sent up here at the first murmurs of trouble. So he sent me to Manila to look over this craft, and, if possible, to cripple or sink her.”
“Sink this gunboat?” asked Dave, in amazement.