'Then you must all vow not to tell any one that he is a foreigner.'
The boatman considered the matter for a few moments. 'We will promise. We will take an oath,' he declared at length. He lighted a piece of paper, and, as it burned to ashes, he expressed the hope that, if he told any one that the two men with goggles were foreigners, he might also be totally destroyed by fire. The other men took the oath in the same fashion.
'Will they keep it?' Charlie inquired, when Ping Wang had made known to Fred and him the nature of the oath.
'I cannot be sure of it,' Ping Wang said.
'I will keep this rifle until we reach the end of our river-trip,' Fred declared.
Shortly after the sun had set, the boat arrived at the place where Ping Wang had decided to land.
'The foreigners and I will not land until daybreak,' he said to the boat-owner. 'Moor the boat. It will be safer for us to begin our journey by daylight,' Ping Wang said to Charlie and Fred, after telling them that they were to remain on board until the morning. 'I have not travelled by the road we are going to take since I was a small boy, and consequently it is not familiar to me. There is another road which leads to Kwang-ngan, but it is more frequented than the one by which we are to travel. Our road is a round-about one, and rarely used since the shorter road has been made. I hope that we shall meet very few people.'
'How far shall we have to walk before we reach the first village?' Charlie asked.
'About five miles; and Kwang-ngan is six miles beyond that.'
'Then we shall be there to-morrow night, I suppose?'