It was fortunate that we removed all traces of piracy and restored the “Leckwith” to an honest vessel for as soon as we reached Hong Kong we were boarded and inspected with great care. It transpired that while I was away with Miss Crofton, Norton had landed at a little village a hundred and fifty miles down the coast and played hob with it. I knew nothing about it until after we were examined, when Lorensen told me about it. Norton’s excuse was that he believed the village was inhabited only by pirates and he wanted to teach them a lesson, but there was no doubt in my mind that he had hoped to find a lot of loot there. The “Leckwith,” naturally, answered the descriptions of the ship that made the raid, and if we had not been nicely cleaned up when the officers came aboard, we undoubtedly would have been arrested for piracy, instead of which we were absolved from all suspicion.
The “Florence” was waiting for us and I at once disposed of her, through our agents, to an English trading company. In a few weeks the “Surprise” came in from Yokohama, where she had delivered a cargo, and was sold to a Japanese house with a branch in Hong Kong. I remember that she brought seven thousand pounds, which I gave to Norton. We paid off their crews, with a bonus and their share of the profits, and saw that they were scattered and shipped on long voyages in different directions, as we had done with the surplus crew of the “Leckwith.” We had no fear that they would carelessly tell what they knew about our operations, for they were pleased with their treatment and, beyond that, self-protection would have stood in the way of any complaint against us, but we considered it wise to distribute them to the four corners of the earth before they had an opportunity to fill up with rum and become braggarts, wherein would be danger to all of us. The two captains, Brown and Heather, had fallen under the spell of the China Sea, with its dangers and its delights, and were in no hurry to leave it for prosaic England, but we knew they could be relied on; if they had not been discreet and close-mouthed I never would have engaged them. I had been out East about two years and considered that the adventures I had encountered there amply repaid me for the time, to say nothing of the joy I had found in establishing the identity of the Beautiful White Devil as a real, live being, and falling in love with her. Therefore I insisted on treating all of our men with a liberality that amounted to prodigality, but even after that Norton and I divided up something over three hundred thousand dollars, as the remaining share of what we had cleaned up from the pirates.
We loafed around Hong Kong for weeks, for it had been arranged that Miss Crofton should communicate with me there as to the probable result of her effort to secure a pardon after the confession she intended to make to the Home Secretary. Finally the word came, and it was a great shock to me, for it was a report of her death, which occurred suddenly at her old home in Ireland, soon after she arrived there on her way to London. I had been in love before, more times than once, but never so much as with her. For her I was ready to give up my adventurous life, but the knowledge that she was gone from me made me more desperate than ever. I was tempted to resume the old piratical life, yet I could not bear to remain amid scenes that would constantly remind me of her. So I left the China Sea behind me and never have returned to it.
On receipt of the heart-breaking news I told Norton the whole story of how I became acquainted with the beautiful Miss Crofton and fell in love with her, and how my romance had been shattered. I told him he could stay there if he wanted to, and return to the old life if he wished, but that I intended to leave at once and for all time. He declared he would go with me, and suggested that we take a trip to Australia; but I was moody and wanted to cruise around a bit, in the solitude of the open sea, with no definite object in view. We headed up along the coast and Norton, who was looking after the navigation of the ship, in which I had lost all interest for the time being, put in at Amoy, for want of something better to do. He thought a visit to a strange port might do me good. While we were lying there Norton became acquainted with a Chinese or Corean merchant. He was anxious to get up to the Shantung Peninsula, where the Germans were beginning to establish themselves firmly with the idea of taking possession of that rich section of China when the Empire was divided up among the “friendly” powers, so called because they were altogether unfriendly, and Norton proposed that we continue our indefinite journey that far and take him along. I agreed, thinking we might find something interesting in new scenes. When we got nearly up to the Peninsula Norton unfolded a new scheme. Our merchant passenger, he said, had told him of a lot of treasure buried in a cemetery in Corea, close to a river and not a great way from the coast, which was guarded only by the superstitious native fear of the dead. It would be an easy matter to secure the treasure, according to his story, and he offered to lead us to it if we would give him a share of it. By that time I was in a frame of mind to welcome any excitement and I told Norton to close with him and go ahead.
Accordingly we altered our course and sailed for the west coast of Corea. I do not know how far we followed it but we stopped at the mouth of a small river, which ran close to the cemetery, about twelve miles up. We went up to it at night in a steam launch we had bought at Hong Kong; Norton, the merchant, and I, and eight men. The cemetery, which was five hundred yards back from the river, was an open space of perhaps ten acres, filled with funny-looking graves, covered with signs and charms. In the centre of it was an unroofed structure about fifty feet square, with stone walls twelve or fifteen feet high. It was there, said our guide, that the money was concealed.
Just as we came to the edge of the burying ground a procession of twenty or twenty-five white-robed men, marching in Indian file and carrying a number of ladders, appeared on the opposite side. They marched to the square structure, raised their ladders against the wall and went over. In half an hour they climbed out again, with several large and heavy sacks which were lowered with some difficulty, took down their ladders and marched away in silence. Our guide explained, with many Chinese curses, that they doubtless were a delegation sent from Seoul after the treasure. Certainly they had taken something away with them and it probably was money. There was no telling whether it was gold, silver, or copper, for all our guide professed to know was that a “large amount” was hidden there. From the size and weight of the numerous sacks in which it was carried away I got the idea that the “treasure” consisted of the cheap “cash” used in that country and China and that the total value of it probably did not exceed a few hundred dollars at the most. Had it been made up of gold coin it would have represented the national wealth of Corea.
Some of the store might have been left behind, but I did not care to investigate. The outlook was not promising and the situation was uncanny to a degree that got on my already depressed nervous system; so, with some random remarks about Corean methods of burying their dead and hiding their money, we walked back to the launch and returned to the ship, without having derived even a reasonable amount of excitement from the trip. That fiasco finally fixed in me a resolution, that had been forming for some time, to get entirely away from that part of the world. We turned about and landed our disappointed passenger at Shanghai and from there took a course almost due south, which carried us east of the Philippine Islands, down through Molucca Pass, past the Island of Celebes, into the Florida Sea, and out through the Floris Strait into the Indian Ocean. Our final objective port was London, but I had no wish to make another trip through the China Sea and its islands at the south, which held so many painful memories, and took this roundabout course to avoid them.
CHAPTER X
THE BURIAL OF THE “LECKWITH”
ON my way back to England on the “Leckwith,” along toward the end of the still sadly remembered year of 1876, after having said farewell to the China Sea, with its beauty, booty, and blood, we decided to go around by the Cape of Good Hope to look South Africa over a bit. By that time I was eager for anything that offered excitement and diversion, without regard to either the principles which were involved or the lack of them. I had brooded over the death of the Beautiful White Devil, for love of whom I was willing to give up my old ways and become a quiet and orderly person, until I had interpreted it to mean that the unseen and unknown directing force of my career had no sympathy with my reformatory resolutions and had taken that brutal way of making plain the command that I was to remain a homeless adventurer. The result was that my nature, for the time being, was as embittered as it had been exalted only a short time before, and my hand was raised against every one. Norton, my partner in this expedition, was delighted with the change that had come over me, and hailed with unconcealed joy what he regarded as my return to a normal frame of mind.
We put in at the Mauritius for coal and there we heard stories regarding the still flourishing slave trade which led us to believe we might find some spirited and profitable sport with them, in the same way that we had preyed on the Chinese and Malay pirates out East. We sailed around Cape St. Mary into the Mozambique Canal, between the East African coast and the island of Madagascar, and began bartering for ivory, gold dust, palm nuts, and animal skins, as a mask for our real purpose and to give us a favorable opportunity to study the situation. Investigation proved that we had been correctly advised regarding it. The Sultan of Zanzibar had practically suppressed the sale of slaves in his domain, but the only effect had been to drive the trade down the coast, and large numbers of negroes from the interior were being handled by the Arabs, who were born to the business. For the pick of the slaves there was a regular course down the White Nile and the Blue Nile and on across into Arabia, hitting the back trail on the path of Moses. The rest of the unfortunate victims of a civilization which makes might right were driven in long strings down to the coast, chiefly to Mozambique and to the delta of the Zambesi River, which was a favorite spot for barterings in blacks. The bulk of these slaves were intended for shipment across the channel to Madagascar, where there always was a demand for them among the old Hovas, or aristocrats, who owned the large plantations. The balance of them were sent to the Arabian coast for distribution. They were shipped to both markets in dhows, low-lying vessels that, with a fair wind and comparatively smooth sea, could make almost steamship time. They need to be fast, for a British cruiser, on the lookout for just such ships, was continually patrolling the channel in the general course of a figure 8, and sometimes there were two or three of them on the watch. The Arabs kept close tab on the warships and knew about where they were at all times, except when they doubled on their course, which they sometimes did, with occasional disastrous results.