The adventures of Captain O'Shea

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

The village head-men were summoned, and these venerable worthies declared themselves anxious to aid the sick leader of the foreign soldiers. He had played with their children, paid the shopkeepers their prices without dispute, and sat with the old men in the tea-houses. Nor had his armed force committed any abuses, although they held the village at their mercy. It was wisdom to try to carry Captain O’Shea to his own people. The village would gladly furnish a guide and plenty of coolies, a covered litter, and a small house-boat in which the sick man could be made comfortable.

The evacuation of Wang-Li-Fu was a dismal business. The adventurers were oppressed by a sense of failure and discouragement. Their enterprise had fizzled out like a dampened match. This final act was inglorious. Their plight was worse than when they had been stranded as beach-combers in Shanghai. They carried Captain O’Shea to a sampan, or flat-bottomed boat, with a tiny cabin of bamboo and matting, which could be towed against the sluggish current of the river. The men disposed themselves in the two boats saved from the Whang Ho steamer, and a squad of half-naked coolies strung themselves along a towing-rope to help track the sampan up-stream.

The sick man lay stretched upon his quilts and showed little interest in the slow progress of the flotilla. Between spells of heavy drowsiness he watched the slimy shore and fringing marsh slide past. Through the first day the wind was cool and the air bright, and the boats trailed up-river until after nightfall before they were pulled into the bank to moor. As the part of caution, no fires were made and conversation was hushed. The foreigners had an uncomfortable suspicion that this might be hostile territory, although they had discovered nothing to warrant the conjecture. But O’Shea had been babbling about the Painted Joss while flighty with fever, and Charley Tong Sin was still unaccounted for.

Between midnight and morning the sick man came out of his uneasy dreams. As it seemed to him, he was clear-headed, his senses alert, his judgment normal. Just why he should be cooped up in this native boat was a bit difficult to comprehend, but why try to understand it? There was only one problem of real importance. And now was the time to solve it. O’Shea laughed to think what a stupid, blundering fool he had been to recruit an armed expedition and come clattering into this corner of China with so much fuss and noise.

If a man wanted to find the Painted Joss, all he had to do was listen to the friendly, familiar voices that whispered in his ears. O’Shea could hear them now. He accepted them as a matter of course. His eyes were very bright as he pulled on his shoes and fumbled for the revolver in its holster under the pillow. Curiously enough, he was no longer conscious of great physical weakness. It was tremendously urgent that he should go to find the Painted Joss without a moment’s delay. His men would not understand if he should tell them about the friendly voices that were offering to show him the way. They might try to restrain him. He must leave the boat quietly, unobserved.

Crawling from beneath the matting curtain, he gained the river bank. His knees were exceedingly shaky and his hands trembled uncertainly, but he was confident that he had found the trail of the Painted Joss and that his vigor would soon return. Charley Tong Sin outwit him? Nonsense! O’Shea would have been startled beyond measure to know that he was wandering off in delirium. He would have taken a shot at any one rash enough to tell him so.

Undetected he moved along the shore, silent as a red Indian, and was presently lost in the darkness. It was muddy walking, and he turned into the tall marsh grass, where a carpet of dead vegetation made firmer footing. Frequently he was compelled to halt and regain his labored breath, but his purpose was unwavering. The voices drove him on. He had no sense of fear. After some time his erratic progress led him back to the river. There he stumbled over a log and sat down to wait for daybreak, which had begun to flush the sky.

His head throbbed as though hammers were pounding it and waves of blurring dizziness troubled him. What was more disquieting, the guiding voices had ceased to talk to him. He felt crushing disappointment and sadness. His eyes filled with tears.

Dawn found him seated dejectedly with his back propped against the log, his head drooping, while he stared at the muddy river. Here he would wait on the chance that his friends might find him. As the day brightened, his aimless vision was caught by something which powerfully awakened his weary, befogged perceptions. It acted as a stimulant of tremendous force. Sitting bolt upright he gazed at a footprint, cleanly outlined, which had become sun-dried and hardened in a stratum of clay.

It had been made by a leather sole and heel. The outline was pointed and narrow. Into O’Shea’s quickened memory there flashed the picture of Charley Tong Sin stretched upon the cabin floor of the Whang Ho steamer, his patent-leather shoes waving gently as he went to sleep under the soporific influence of a knock-out blow. He felt absolutely certain that this particular print had been left by the fashionable footgear of the vanished comprador. The voices had guided him aright. It was here that Charley Tong Sin had come ashore after making his way up the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells in some kind of a native boat.