“Oh, never mind Mr Meredith,” said the captain; “we are all friends here; speak out.”
“Well, you know, sir,” said Jack, diffidently—he didn’t like spinning a yarn, as he called it, before strangers—“that I understand a little Chinese; and I caught something of what the serang was saying to those two beggars in the boat.”
“Did you?” said the captain and Mr Meredith, the passenger, almost together, eagerly. “What was it? what did the rascal say?”
“You may well say rascal, sir,” said Jack. “For though I did not hear all their conversation, from what I gathered I think they’re up to some mischief. I first heard the chap in the boat say, ‘And how about the passengers?’ or something like that as far as I could make out; and the serang said, ‘There’s only one come on the ship.’”
The captain nudged Mr Meredith here, and the first mate, and all three chuckled.
“And then the man in the boat said, ‘You are certain there are not more aboard?’ And the serang answered, ‘No, only that one passenger’—‘strange man,’ he called him—‘and twelve men besides the boy officer,’—I suppose meaning me, sir. And then the man in the boat, who seemed to have some authority over the serang, said, ‘In about ten days, if the wind is good or fair; and don’t be in a hurry, but wait for the signal!’ and then the Malay chap turned and saw me, and the boat shoved off.”
“Very good, Harper,” said the captain; “we’ll keep an eye on him, never fear;” and then, as Jack went off again to his post he turned to Mr Meredith: “I confess that I was wrong, and you and the admiral right, sir!” he said. “And now we must contrive to outwit these yellow devils, and as they’re half-Chinese and ought to know, show them how to catch a Tartar!”
“Ay,” said Mr Meredith, laughing, “we’ll give them a lesson they’ll never forget, too, while we’re about it! But, captain, we have plenty of time before us—ten days or more, just as I calculated; and all we have to do now is to look out sharp for squalls in the meantime.”
“Right, sir,” said Captain Morton, “we’ll all have to look out sharp, for they’re treacherous rascals at the best, and these seem to be the worst! Keep your weather eye open, Scuppers, and give Sprott a hint—although not a word, mind you, to the men yet, with the exception of Bill Martens, who can be trusted to bide his time, as he knows already as much as ourselves. As to little Jack Harper, he’s a ’cute boy, and is not likely to forget what he has heard.” And there the conversation ended and the subject dropped.
All that day the Hankow Lin was working her way down the river from Canton, which lies some eighty miles from its mouth; and at nightfall the ship again anchored, the navigation being somewhat intricate and the breeze dying away; but next morning it was up anchor and away again with everything hoisted that could draw and the wind right astern, the vessel making such good progress through the water that long before mid-day she had passed through the Bocca Tigris, or “tiger’s mouth” passage, and was out in the open ocean.