The Blue Dragon: A Tale of Recent Adventure in China

by Kirk Munroe

  CHAPTER XIV

  A TURN OF FORTUNE'S TIDE

  For a moment Rob's heart beat quick with joy and his face becameradiant; then it clouded again as he said, quietly:

  "I think you must be mistaken, sir; for I received a cablegram inAmerica that my father was too ill to travel, and longed to see mebefore he died. That is the reason I am now here."

  "No," asserted the stranger, whose name, as Rob afterwards learned, wasBishop, "I am confident there can be no mistake, for I saw Dr. and Mrs.Mason Hinckley in Hong-Kong. I was newly arrived, and had gone with anacquaintance to arrange for a lot of stuff to be taken aboard the Cantonboat. While we were there, another boat of the same line came in fromthe upper Si Kiang. She had but two European passengers, a lady, and herhusband who was so weak from illness that we assisted him to a carriage.My friend knew them slightly, and after they were gone he told me thatthey were a missionary doctor and his wife from Wu Hsing, that theirname was Hinckley, that the doctor had been critically ill, but had mostunexpectedly rallied, so that he was able to travel, and that they wereto leave for the States on the _China_, which sailed that evening. Allthis was distinctly impressed on my mind by the news of the Wu Hsingoutbreak, which came a week later, and I was glad to remember that twoat least of the possible victims had escaped in time."

  Rob listened breathlessly to these details, and, when Mr. Bishopfinished speaking, he exclaimed: "They are alive, then, and safe! IfI only had known, and stayed quietly where I was! Do you remember thedate, sir, on which you saw them in Hong-Kong?"

  "Yes, it was the 10th of last month."

  "The very day on which I was to have sailed from Tacoma, and they musthave sent another cable after I left Hatton. It's all right, though, andI am too glad to care about anything else."

  "It is too bad that you have missed each other, and still are onopposite sides of the world; but I suppose you will follow them by thenext homeward-bound steamer, and so rejoin them inside of another sixweeks. I envy you, and only wish I had a prospect of again seeing theStates within the same number of months."

  "I expect your chance is several times better than mine," laughed Rob,who for the moment was too light-hearted to give a serious thought tohis own awkward predicament. "I would go quick enough if I could, but Ihaven't the money even to pay my fare to Hong-Kong. So it looks as ifI'd have to stay here until I can earn the price of a ticket back towhere I have just come from. Do you happen to know of any one who couldgive me a job?"

  "I can't say at this moment," replied Mr. Bishop, regarding the ladkeenly as he spoke; "but I may think of some one. Where are you staying?"

  "Nowhere. I only came on this morning's boat, and my baggage still is onboard."

  "Then suppose you get it up here and stay with me for a day or two whileyou look around. I've a big house, with plenty of room, and shall beglad of your company. Besides, I expect you can help me a good deal withmy Chinese studies."

  "All right, sir," assented Rob, promptly accepting this proposition,"and I'll be back inside of an hour."

  With this our lad hurried away, saying to himself as he went: "I believeI must be one of the luckiest fellows in the world, and only a littlewhile ago I thought I was one of the most miserable. My biggest bit ofluck, though, was having Jo come to live at Hatton and teach me Chinese,for that seems about the most valuable accomplishment a fellow can haveout here. I do wonder what became of him."

  Rob crossed the canal bridge, went out through the big gate, thatpromptly was opened at his approach, and turned down Heavenly CloudsStreet with the assured air of one who had resided in Canton all hislife. Then he received a shock, and at the same time proved himselfto be one of the very newest of new arrivals in that crafty city ofpoverty-sharpened wits. On a bit of straw matting, spread above thegranite flagging of the narrow roadway, lay a child three or four yearsold, apparently in the very grasp of death. Its eyes were closed, itspale features were distorted as though by a spasm; it was gasping forbreath, and its hands were tightly clinched, while its poor little bodywas only partially hidden beneath a bit of ragged, blue cloth. Besidethe dying child knelt a mother, bending over it and rocking her bodyto and fro in an agony of grief, while tears streamed from her eyes.She, too, was clad in rags, and evidently was in the last extremity ofpoverty, since she had not even a kennel in which to conceal her dyingchild from the curious gaze of the swarming street. No one stopped tospeak with her or to offer her the slightest aid in this time of hersore distress; and as Rob, with swelling heart, gazed on this pitifulpicture, he said to himself that all Chinese were brutes and unworthythe name of human beings.

  "Can't something be done for them?" he asked of a passer-by, andspeaking in Chinese; but the man only laughed and hurried on withoutanswering. Then Rob spoke to the woman herself, but her grief was toogreat to permit her to take heed, and she only stroked the face of herdying child with gestures of despair. At this, feeling powerless to aidher by any other means, Rob drew a silver dollar from his pocket andgently laid it on the mat beside the little sufferer. Then he hurriedaway.

  While he was within sight the woman did not alter her position noroffer to pick up his gift. Only when he had disappeared, and thestealthy hand of a street urchin was about to close over the covetedcoin, did she snatch it from the mat, spring to her feet, deal thewould-be thief a stinging box on the ear, pick up her opium-druggedchild, and serenely walk away, well satisfied with the success of hercarefully planned tableau. When Rob returned that way he wondered whathad become of the dying child who had so excited his sympathies, and itwas only on the following day, when he again saw them at the same place,going through the same performance, that he realized how he had beenduped.

  On that first morning he transferred his belongings from the steamerto the house of his newly made friend, who told him that, as there wasnothing in particular for him to do just then, he was free to go wherehe pleased. So he strolled to the riverfront of the Shameen, wherefrom one of the tree-shaded benches, placed at intervals along itslength, he watched the wonderful life of the river, with its swarmingjunks and sampans. After a while, attracted by a huge white-and-yellownondescript-appearing craft, moored in the stream at some distance abovewhere he sat, he walked in that direction for a closer view. He hadproceeded but a few steps when he was more than ever puzzled to notethat above the object of his curiosity floated an American flag, whilehe also could see the grim muzzles of enormous guns protruding fromvarious parts of its superstructure. It evidently was a ship of somekind, and also a man-of-war; but to Rob's eyes it was of even strangerappearance than the closely packed acres of Chinese craft surroundingit. He finally decided that it must be a wreck, resting on the bottomof the river, since its deck appeared to be but a few inches above theturbid waters, and he wondered why its crew, sauntering back and forthbeneath the awnings, did not exhibit more concern.

  While Rob thus was puzzling, a young man, wearing the uniform of anAmerican naval officer, walked briskly up to where he was standing, andsignalled a sampan.

  "Can you tell me, sir," asked our lad, addressing this officer, "whatAmerican ship that is out there, and how she got wrecked?"

  "Wrecked!" repeated the other. "What do you mean by wrecked? She looksall right to me. Is anything the matter with the old packet?"

  "Of course, I don't know much about wrecks," replied Rob, a littlenettled by the officer's tone, "but if a ship sunk to the bottom of aChinese river, nearly ten thousand miles from home, isn't wrecked, thenthe word must mean something different from what I think it does."

  "But she isn't sunk. She's floating all right, and showing fully as muchfreeboard as she did when we brought her across the Pacific, nearly twoyears ago. Monitors always look that way, you know."

  "Monitor! Is she a monitor?" cried Rob, who never before had seen one ofthis peculiarly American type of war-ship.

  "To be sure. She is the United States monitor _Monterey_, one of thefinest of her class, and, with the exception of her sister-ship, the_Monadnock_, now at Sh
anghai, the most powerful fighting-machine nowafloat in Asiatic waters. Wouldn't you like to go aboard and take a lookat her?"

  Of course, Rob gladly accepted this invitation, and, entering the sampanwith Lieutenant Hibbard, was sculled out to the floating fortress, whichalways lies off Canton, providing a safe-refuge for foreigners against astorm of wrath such as sometimes sweeps over that turbulent city. She isat the same time a most effective peace-keeper, since the Chinese knowas well as any one that her powerful guns could within a few hours laytheir metropolis in ruins.

  The _Monterey_ is famous as having been the first ship of her class tocross the Pacific to Manila, where she added such strength to Dewey'shandful of war-ships as to render his position there impregnable.

  On gaining her side Rob found the rail to be quite two feet abovewater, instead of only a few inches, as he had supposed. He also foundher to be of great breadth of beam, with wide sweeps of unencumbereddeck, both forward and aft. Safely below the water-line he found roomy,well-ventilated quarters for officers and crew, as well as ample engine,coal, and ammunition spaces. He marvelled at her huge guns, polisheduntil they shone, mounted fore and aft in steel turrets of a strengthand construction to defy the most powerful of modern missiles. At thesame time, these could be revolved at will, by a mechanism so delicateas to be controlled by a finger. Rob took tiffin with the officers ofthe ward-room mess, whom he entertained with news from the States andfrom Manila, and when, late in the afternoon, he again was set on shore,he felt that his first day in Canton, in spite of its clouded beginning,had been one of the very happiest and most interesting of his life.

  That evening Mr. Bishop, whom our lad regarded at once as friend andemployer, found leisure for a long conversation with him, during whichhe said:

  "As you probably know, one of the most valuable railway concessions inChina, that for a line from this city to Hankow, on the Yang-tse-kiang,nearly a thousand miles due north from here, has been granted to anAmerican syndicate. Another concession, for a line from Hankow to Pekin,was granted a year earlier to the Belgians. These two railways, meetingat the metropolis of Central China, will form a grand trunk-line,extending nearly two thousand miles north and south through thevery heart of the empire. The Belgians already are at work on theconstruction of their line, while the Americans have made their surveysand are ready to begin construction. I am an American engineer, employedby the syndicate, and, as a preliminary step to my further work, I amabout to undertake a journey of investigation from here to Hankow,and, possibly, on to Pekin. My plans for this journey are so nearlycompleted that I could start to-morrow; but I have not as yet secured asatisfactory interpreter. Will you accept the position? The trip willbe long, and to a certain extent dangerous, but the pay will, I think,be sufficient to carry you from Shanghai to America after our journeyis completed. What do you say? Are you ready to plunge into the heartof China, and bury yourself from the world for the next two or threemonths, or do you prefer to remain here and look for some easier job?"