Taking Tales: Instructive and Entertaining Reading

by William Henry Giles Kingston

I heard voices I knew giving orders. Yes, there stood Captain Bolton on the quarter-deck, and Mr Alder seeing to the boat being hoisted up. Another person stood before me, watching the men helping us up, it was Toby Potts. Now I felt sure that I was in a dream. Toby had been lost so many months before on the other side of the Pacific. He did not know either Bill or me. No one knew us. That made it still more like a dream. I forgot how many months had passed by since we were on board the Rose, and that we were well-nigh starved to death.

The captain came round as we sat on the deck, and spoke very kindly to us, and told us that hammocks should be got ready, and that we should have some food as soon as it could be warmed up.

“Don’t you know me, Captain Bolton?” I asked as he came up to me.

He looked at me hard, as the light of the lantern fell on my face. “What! Tom Trueman! I should say, if I didn’t believe that he has long ago been in another world,” he exclaimed; “if it is Tom, I am right glad to see you, lad. Tell me how you escaped death.”

So I told him, and made Bill known, for he was in a fright, thinking that we should be punished for leaving the beach without leave. It did me good to see the pleasure the kind captain felt at finding that we were alive.

By this time some warm turtle soup was brought us, and a little weak brandy and water, and then we were carried below and put into hammocks.

It was not till the next day that I was certain I was not mistaken about Toby Potts. He had floated on the very hencoop which I had thrown over to him, till the next morning, when one of the ships which we had seen, hove-to, passed close to him, and picked him up. That ship fell in with the Rose two or three weeks after we were supposed to have been lost, and Toby was returned on board. The Rose herself had suffered much damage in a gale, and had put into harbour to repair; she had also been some time in collecting sandal-wood, with which she was now on her way to Canton. This accounted for our falling in with her, for I thought that by this time she would have been far on her way home.

We had a fine passage to Canton, or rather to Whampoa, which is as far up the river of Canton as ships go. The mouth of the river is known as the Boca Tigris. The captain kindly took me to Canton; it is a most curious city. On the river are thousands of boats, the greater number not more than fourteen feet long, and twelve broad, and covered over with a bamboo roof. In these whole families live from one end of the year to the other, or rather from their births to their deaths. Then there were junks as big as men of war, with huge, carved, green dragons at their bows, and all sorts of coloured flags. But the most curious sights are on shore. The city is surrounded by walls, and the houses look as if they were cut out of coloured paper; the streets are so narrow that only two sedan chairs can pass, and no wheel carriage enters them. At each end of the street are gates, which are shut at night and guarded by policemen. The shops are all open in front, and all sorts of curious things are sold. The people themselves are odd looking, with their black hair in long tails hanging down their backs, and their yellow or blue silk coats, and wide trousers and slippers. The great men walk about under big coloured umbrellas, or else are carried by two men in a covered chair on poles. They are a very industrious, hard-working people, and every inch of land in the country is cultivated. Though they are so clever and neat-handed, and can do many things as well as the English, yet they are idolaters. In their churches, or pagodas as they are called, there are ugly images, which they worship. They burn sandal-wood and bits of paper before them, which they fancy is like saying their prayers. The chief thing produced in the country is tea.

When we had landed the hides, seal-skins, and sandal-wood, which we had brought, we took on board a cargo of tea, in chests. With this we sailed for Sydney, New South Wales, as the captain calculated that we should arrive there about the time that the wool produced in that colony would be ready to ship to England. There are many dangers in the seas between those two places. There are typhoons, which are strong, fierce winds; and there are rocks and shoals; and there are pirates, mostly Chinese or a people like them, who attack vessels, if they can take them unawares, and rob them, and sometimes murder all on board. We escaped all dangers, and arrived safely off Sydney harbour. We entered between two high headlands into a large bay or lake, in which any number of vessels might lie at anchor. The city of Sydney is a fine-looking place, with towers, and churches, and large houses, and wide streets, and carriages in great numbers driving about, and vessels of all sorts lying alongside the quays, two or three landing emigrants just arrived from England; and then there are huge warehouses close to the harbour. Into one of them the tea we had brought was hoisted, and out of another came the wool, in large packages, with which the Rose was to be freighted. What astonished me was to think that eighty years ago not a white man was living in all that vast country, and now there are large towns in all directions, and villages, and farms, and sheep-stations, and thousands upon thousands of sheep, some of the wool from whose backs we were now carrying home to be made up into all sorts of woollen goods in our factories.

With cheerful voices we ran round the capstan as we weighed anchor, we hoped to remain at our bows till we dropped it in the Mersey. The whaler’s people had left us at Hong Kong, at the mouth of the Canton river. They said that we were too quiet for them.