“Everything is progressing finely,” remarked the doctor; but the stolid attendant made no reply and we passed on to our own cabins.
CHAPTER X.
AN UNHEEDED WARNING.
The voyage of the Seagull across the Pacific was safely accomplished and with excellent speed. We crossed the Yellow Sea without incident and in due time anchored at Woosung, which is at the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang. This river is navigable for small steamers for several hundred miles, but the yellow mud that it washes down from the foothills of the interior mountain ranges forms a huge bar across the mouth, which ocean steamships cannot cross. So passengers are obliged to disembark at Woosung and take either the railway or a small steamer for the twenty-five mile run up to Shanghai.
Mai Lo decided upon the steamer. As soon as we anchored we went ashore and made arrangements, and on the following morning our little party prepared to follow him, and start at once upon our strange adventure.
The Chinese Health Inspector for the port was curious and exacting. He made us unlock the coffin of Prince Kai and when the swathed figure was exposed he prodded it cautiously with his bamboo wand. Mai Lo was indignant at this outrage, and protested so vigorously that the official refrained from further investigation. He countersigned the doctor’s certificate of death from accidental injury, and allowed us to proceed.
Until this time we had been uneasy lest Mai Lo should suspect the imposture we had practiced. He had remained so stolid and indifferent that, although we had allowed him at various times to see us saturating the bandaged form with our rum, we could not feel really assured that he believed the corpse of Prince Kai was still in our keeping. But the mandarin’s genuine anger at the meddling official—if voluble and brusque phrases in Chinese may be construed as anger—fully restored our confidence.
The chest was solemnly rowed to the quay, just beneath one of the mud forts, and placed aboard a smart little river steamer that was puffing a cloud of black smoke from its funnel. Uncle Naboth came off with us in another boat, for he was to accompany us as far as Shanghai and see us started upon our real journey up the Yang-tse. We carried light baggage, but concealed about our persons a plentiful supply of arms and ammunition.
Less than half a day’s ride upon the winding yellow waters of the river brought us to the important city of Shanghai—the most important in all the Province of Chili.
The doctor and I insisted upon conveying the important casket to the Astor House, where we were to stop, and the proprietor gave us a private room for it in an outbuilding and appointed several Chinese servants to guard the supposed corpse of the Prince.
Here, during the next few days, came several Chinese relatives of the dead man to burn prayers for his peaceful repose before the little image of a god and the wooden ancestral tablets which Mai Lo had set up at the head of the casket. These prayers were printed in Chinese characters upon rice paper, and when burned before the god were considered very efficacious.