After half an hour he came back to me.
“That little woman’s all right. She’s made o’ good enough clay to be Amur’can, an’ says she’ll do everythin’ she can to help me. She’s gone to call the captain now.”
Soon she appeared with the captain, talking in the most animated manner to him and punctuating every sentence with most expressive gestures.
Then they came together towards us and she said, “I haf ze captain told what you say off your great journey, and he tell me it iss impossible we come to Nagasaki so early unless he burn extra fifty tons of coal. Ze captain say if you pay ze coal he can do it, but if you not pay ze coal it iss impossible, but ze captain he like verry much to help you.”
To this my travelling companion made reply, “Madam, will you please tell the captain that the cost of the extra fifty tons of coal is but a trifle, and I’ll do a good deal more than pay for that. I am so anxious to catch that train that if the captain will bring the ship into the harbour by seven o’clock I’ll make him a present of my watch.”
The lady interpreted this. The captain shrugged his shoulders, then he looked up at the funnel, from which great rolling convolutions of thick black smoke were belching, and he let his eye run along the line of reek floating lazily in the cobalt astern for many miles—almost, it seemed, to where the yellow, sun-baked Manchurian hills were disappearing below the horizon—his brows knitted in thought.
Before he had finished his cogitations the would-be breaker of records put his hand into the left pocket of his waistcoat and drew out his watch. He carefully removed the chamois skin bag, soiled sufficiently to show it had long protected the treasure it covered, and holding the watch, which looked a perfect beauty as it caught the sun, in the palm of his hand, he addressed himself straight to the captain.
“Captain, I must catch that train, and if you’ll help me to do it, sir, my watch shall be yours before I leave the ship. Ain’t it a beauty?” and he held it out for admiration.
All this he said in a manner that carried conviction with it. The lady interpreted again, but even that seemed unnecessary. The captain had capitulated, and from that moment the result lay in little doubt. The success or failure of this man’s trip had hung in the balance, and the issue was decided by a five-shilling watch glittering in the sun on the deck of a Russian steamer in the Yellow Sea.
Being in the secret, I could feel only admiration at the record-breaker’s sang-froid and the clever and dramatic manner in which he played his part.