They stopped the rickshaw some hundred yards from the centre of the village, paid their grumbling coolie, and then Ping Sang trudged down to the landing-place with his baskets of sugar-canes, and squatted by the road-side, in spite of the hostile looks of the vendors already there.
A Tsi followed at some distance, got into a sampan, and was sculled out to the junks.
Ping Sang watched him clambering over the ship's sides; but almost immediately afterwards he noticed that a scuffle was going on and saw A Tsi thrown overboard, and, missing his boat underneath, fall with a splash into the sea, bundle and all. He swam ashore easily and scrambled up the beach with a very rueful countenance, amidst the shrieks of laughter of the coolies along the sea-shore, who had gathered to see the fun.
As he passed Ping Sang he made a previously agreed-upon sign, which meant that the Englishman was aboard, then he entered an eating-house across the road.
Hardly had A Tsi disappeared when a rickshaw came rushing up, a Chinaman jumped out, threw a piece of silver on the ground and ran down to the water's edge, got into a sampan, and urged the boatman to hurry off to the same two junks. Ping Sang just caught a glimpse of his face and it seemed familiar, but where he had seen it before he could not think. He watched him board the junks, and wondered whether he too would meet the same rough treatment; but he did not reappear—he evidently belonged to them.
The old gentleman racked his brains, but could not, try as he would, remember that face.
An hour went by, the bell at the little dockyard rang out, and the workmen poured out to their dinner, and Ping Sang, after his unaccustomed exercise, felt very hungry, and longed for his usual luxurious lunch and Manilla cigar. He even felt annoyed that he, one of the smartest business men in the Chinese empire, should be such a failure as a hawker, for no one would buy from him. In desperation, hunger overcame his disgust, and he munched one of his own sugar-canes, smiling grimly to himself at the unappetizing meal. Presently the crowd was scattered by a double coolie rickshaw. The men, in gaudy uniform, stopped close to him, and shortly afterwards, for he kept his eyes on the junks all the time, he saw a European in a white helmet climb down into a boat alongside and come towards the shore.
The sampan rasped against the shore, and the white man stepped out and slowly limped up the sloping landing-place, scanning the faces of the men on either side.
Ping Sang's surmise was correct. He was one of the three men—the Englishman of the "Mysterious Three"—whom he had mentioned in his first letter to Helston—the most reckless adventurer of the lot.
Ping Sang thought there was little chance of his being recognized, but took the precaution of pulling his broad hat over his eyes and bending down over his baskets. It struck him too that his shoulders and back were not grimed and blackened with the sun, and he was hastily pulling his dirty tunic over them, when he was prodded heavily in the stomach, his hat was knocked off, and standing above him was the Englishman, bursting with laughter.