“Nor can I, old fellow,” I rejoined. “I’m as stiff as a boiled lobster and couldn’t move to salute the admiral if he came along.”
“I wish to goodness he would,” cried Ned. “Ay, and with a file of marines at his back, too. Wouldn’t I like to shoot this treacherous old scoundrel, ay, or string him up to the top of that pagoda there!”
“So would I too, Ned,” I replied heartily. “But, I don’t think the yellow rascal means us any harm; at all events, not at present, old fellow. See, he’s actually getting us something to eat, I think.”
“Some nasty mess or other, no doubt,” growled Ned, chafing one of his legs and then stretching it out. “By Jove, though, I’m beginning to get some life in my limbs again, but these blessed cords they tied us with stopped my circulation. Here goes!”
So saying, he made an attempt to scramble up, and the old fellow, who had approached us with a big bowl of rice in both hands, put this down on the ground and gave my companion a lift, afterwards extending the same courtesy to myself.
We then stretched our cramped legs a bit; and, presently, sat down on the outside of our bamboo cages, instead of inside them, being comparatively free.
But, from the way in which the bearers who had carried us, and some other fellows with bows and arrows and broad-bladed knives in their belts, closed round us at the word of command from “yellow hat,” we would have fared ill had we attempted just then to give him and his retainers “leg-bail.”
We saw this at a glance; so, making the best of a bad business, we commenced pegging into the rice the old fellow now handed us, which we did not find at all bad eating.
It was very well cooked, and besides had a bit of salt fish of some sort on the top of the bowl, which we smelt at intervals, being too small to bite, so as to make the main contents of the dish more appetising.
“Not bad,” commented Ned, after taking a preliminary mouthful of it for a taste, delving out the rice with his fingers, no spoon or fork being provided, and the chopsticks à la Chinoise furnished with the bowl being useless to us from our not being accustomed to their proper manipulation. “Better served up, too, than we ever got on board!”