Our stalwart bluejackets appeared to his little, rat eyes, no doubt, like the retinue of a mandarin with a peacock’s feather in his tail at the least; and this impression had, probably, been confirmed by the fact of our being such young fellows, which was a proof of what “big” men we would be when grown-up! Thinking this, I was in no ways alarmed. On the contrary, I chuckled greatly when I recollected what a widely different value the captain or first lieutenant would attach to a couple of harum-scarum midshipmen to the estimation in which this wily old kidnapper evidently held us; glorying in the great sell awaiting him when he came in his bland innocence to exchange our poor carcases for hard cash!
This anticipation so pleased me, that I began to interest myself in the scenes through which we passed to our as yet unknown destination.
The one great drawback to my enjoyment of this amusement was that there was precious little to look at, the country being fiat and dreary in the extreme, and consisting apparently of an endless plain, dotted here and there with heaps of earth, like mud-pies magnified, with the black Peiho serpentining through it in its snake-like curves.
Such are the surroundings of Tientsin, which means “A heavenly spot!”
Burying places we met with at regular intervals, for we could easily tell what they were from the ends of the square box coffins peeping out of the soil that only half covered them, while the bones of the departed frequently covered the earthy track our conductors traversed, which it would have been a vile libel to have called a road.
Occasionally, we came near a collection of huts, with conical roofs resembling the form of the extinguisher usually employed in connection with a bedroom candlestick.
“Yellow hat,” however, would not allow the palanquin bearers to stop at any of these villages, as I supposed the huts represented, our procession not coming to a halt until late in the afternoon; when, on arriving at a place which, in addition to these huts had a pagoda or josshouse, the old rascal grunted a little louder than usual to our bearers and they set down our cages in front of a card-house of the same description as that at Tientsin where we had been so nicely “taken in and done for,” as Macan would have expressed it in his Irish vernacular.
The gags were then dragged, in no very gentle way, from our mouths, and our hands and feet untied, and the leader of the party, in a more pig-like squeak than ever, ordered us to come out of our very uncomfortable quarters.
We thought he meant this at least, from the violent gesticulations he made, waving his arms wildly and hopping about as if he were a parched pea on a griddle; for, of course, we could not make out his gibberish though he squealed and grunted at us at a fine rate!
“I suppose he means us to get out,” said Ned Anstruther, glad to be able to use his tongue again; “but I can’t, I’m so cramped.”