The junk was directly in front of the gate-way in the village wall, and perhaps a hundred yards distant from it. The intervening space was beach, a miry roadway, and a disorderly row of shanties made of drift-wood, with a few boats hauled out for repairs. The heavy timbers of the junk made her a nautical fortress, and the high sides would be difficult of direct assault.
The men swung lustily at the oars, and the boat shot out into the open river. O’Shea steered wide of the village until he could turn and make directly for the junk. It was an admirable bit of strategy, but wholly wasted on this sleepy, shabby Chinese village. There was never a sign of a hostile demonstration. As an anticlimax the thing was absurd. A crowd of men, women, and children streamed out through the gate in the wall and stared with much excited chatter at the foreign invaders. Apparently their behavior meant no more than a harmless curiosity. Several garrulous old gentlemen squatted upon fragments of timber and pulled at their bamboo pipes while they discussed the singular visitation with the oracular demeanor of so many owls.
The bold O’Shea grinned sheepishly. His sensations were those of a man who beheld a heroic enterprise suddenly turned into low comedy. He glanced at the amused faces of his followers and said:
“’Tis not what ye might call a desperate resistance. Let us promenade ashore and look the town over.”
They quitted their fortress and moved along the narrow, swaying staging of bamboo, their rifles ready for use in the event of an ambuscade. The Chinese crowd promptly retreated in noisy confusion. O’Shea ordered a halt. After some delay, three signal shots came down the wind from Major Bannister’s force. He was about to attack the village from the landward side. Now the shopkeepers and coolies scuttled madly away from O’Shea’s party to seek shelter within the walls and discover what all this extraordinary excitement could mean.
Behind them tramped the naval brigade into streets from which the inhabitants were vanishing as rapidly as possible. Somewhere near the centre of the town O’Shea and Major Bannister joined forces. This pair of valiant leaders eyed each other with mutually puzzled chagrin.
“We just walked in without the slightest trouble,” confessed the army man. “What do you make of it?”
“I had the same experience,” observed O’Shea. “And I do not know what to make of it at all. ’Twas me firm conviction that we were prancin’ into a hornet’s nest. The information all pointed that way. I would call it a funny kind of a surprise party.”
“The villagers have no intention of making it unpleasant for us. They have been giving my men eggs and melons and chickens, to keep us good-natured, I presume.”
“Well, we will find quarters and fetch our grub from the junk, and I will buy the drinks, if ye can locate them, for the joke seems to be on me.”