A DISCOVERY IN THE SWAMP
The situation of the young fellow was now pitiable in the extreme. He did not know where to turn. There were six other white men in the place, of whom only two were English; and as he canvassed them one by one in his mind, he recognized that it was hopeless to apply to any of them. Remorse, bitter self-reproach for his folly, mingled with the harrowing fear of ruin and exposure. He thought of the pleasant months he had spent in Mr. Burroughs' house; the kindness all had shown him; the confidence they had put in him; and the thought of losing the good opinion of his friends was agony. He felt that he had kicked away the supports that might have been his. A word to the Mole would, he knew, bring his old friend to his help; but there was that miserable difference between them. A simple promise to Mr. Ting would save him; but pride held him back, and the suspicions that were poisoning his mind. Feeling utterly lost, he went to his room, and buried his aching head on the pillow.
Reinhardt came to him next day.
"Well, did Ting shell out?" he said.
"No," replied Errington. "Give me a week, Reinhardt; I'll pay you in a week, or----"
"Do nozink foolish, my boy. Zat's all right; I will wait a week; in a week anyzink may happen."
On Errington's part it was a mere staving-off of the evil day--a clutching at a straw; the last desperate hope of the gambler that time was on his side.
But how to kill time? He could not attend to his business; there was little else to be done except play cards, and besides having no money, he hated cards now with a savage hatred. Hearing, however, from one of the Englishmen in the place that there was good duck-shooting some few miles up the river, he resolved to go for a day's sport. The Viceroy's request that the Europeans would not venture beyond their own settlement was forgotten, in spite of the fact that it had lately been repeated with some urgency. The country was disturbed, and the swamps haunted by the wild fowl were in the midst of the district affected. They surrounded a number of small villages which were known to be the nests of river pirates, and hot-beds of the insurrectionary movement. To the ordinary traveller the villages were almost unapproachable, being situated on dry tracts encompassed by the reedy marshes that extended for some miles inland from the banks of the river.
One morning Errington started in a native sampan with his Chinese servant. On approaching the spot of which he had been told, he noticed that Lo San looked uneasily at some large Chinese characters painted in white on a rock at the river-side.
"Well, what is it?" he asked.