The Chinese who had told them he had been a number one cook in a big steamer tiptoed nearer to Roger and whispered.
“What?” whispered Roger.
“Taicoon,” whispered the man. “Taicoon Chang. Velly gleat man.”
“What is a Taicoon?” whispered Roger.
“Chieftain, I expect,” whispered Titty.
All the hoppers and searchers, except the one-time cook and the man who had been startled by Gibber’s shadow, now began to hang back, and presently stopped. The other two tiptoed on with their prisoners until, close to the bird-cages, they joined the circle of men who were watching the Taicoon, Chang.
The Taicoon had his back to them and was taking no notice of anybody or anything except a nearly white canary, that was perched on a bare twig stuck into the ground. Two more such bare twigs, about a yard apart, were sticking up between the Taicoon and his canary. The Taicoon whistled softly and held out a finger with something on the tip of it.
Suddenly the canary fluttered from its twig to the next, a yard nearer to the Taicoon.
The onlookers breathed a sigh of admiration.
The Taicoon made a sharp movement with one hand behind his back and they were silent. He whistled again. The canary fluttered its wings and flew to the next twig. Again the Taicoon whistled, and the canary left its twig, flew to his finger, perched on it and took whatever it was that had been waiting there for it.
“Ah!” sighed the onlookers and the Taicoon looked round, his face alight with joy. He caught sight of Titty and Roger. The smile left his face. He made to stand up. Two of the others darted forward to help him to his feet. He scowled at them and stood up slowly, his eyes all the time on the canary that was sitting on his finger. He was the tallest man there. He put a question in Chinese. The one-time cook, and the man who had caught Gibber began talking both at once. He stopped them and signed to the one-time cook, who poured out a flood of Chinese, pointing now at Gibber, now at Roger and now at Titty.
Then he stopped talking and the other man began. Suddenly he crouched on the ground and pointed to his shadow.
“He’s telling how Gibber …” began Roger.
“Shut up,” said Titty.
Suddenly she saw an angry frown on the face of the Taicoon.
“Look out, Roger,” she cried. “Gibber …”
Just in time, Roger pulled at Gibber, who, at the end of his lead, was reaching towards one of the cages of singing larks. At that moment the Taicoon saw the parrot-cage on Titty’s back. He said something, and Titty found two of the Chinese pulling at the cage. They could not very well take it from her because it was fixed on her back like a knapsack. She wriggled out of the loops, took the cage herself, and held it so as to let the Taicoon have a good view of the ship’s parrot.
“Make him say something,” said Roger.
Titty chirped at the parrot, and the parrot put its head on one side.
“Pretty Polly,” said Titty.
“Pieces of eight,” shouted the parrot.
“Very good bud,” said the Taicoon, and then, seriously, “Where you come flom? My captain hide you?”
Titty was making up her mind how to answer him when the Taicoon, forgetting his question, pointed to the canary sitting on his finger and then to the door of the parrot’s cage.
Titty opened it, and the parrot, using his beak as well as his claws, swung himself to the door and looked out. Titty offered her hand and the parrot stepped from the door of the cage to her forefinger.
The Taicoon beamed. Then he pointed at the twig on which the canary had been sitting at first. Titty made the parrot step from her finger to the twig. She looked round. The Taicoon beckoned and Titty went and stood beside him. The great man whistled just as he had whistled to his canary. The parrot opened and shut its wings two or three times, and suddenly flew away with a loud cheerful scream.
“Velly solly. Velly solly,” said the Taicoon. His face had turned so melancholy that Roger for a moment thought he was going to cry. He was looking from one to another of his cages of larks as if he were trying to make up his mind to give one of them to Titty to make up for the loss of her parrot. “Velly, velly solly,” he said again.
Titty was watching the ship’s parrot. It flew up, a green flash in the sunlight, up and up, circled above the tops of the pine-trees and then, suddenly, swooped back, perched on Titty’s hand, screamed “Pretty Polly!”, put its head on one side, half closed an eye, and began to tidy the feathers of its breast.
“Ah!” sighed the Taicoon.
“Ah!” sighed all the other Chinese standing round.
Titty made up her mind. A man so interested in birds could hardly be an enemy. “Roger,” she said, “I’m going to tell him about the others.”
“Well, he talks English,” said Roger.
“Please,” said Titty. “Our brother and sister are somewhere over there. …”
“Blother and sister,” said the Taicoon bird-fancier. “Blother,” pointing at Roger. “Sister,” pointing at Titty.
“No,” said Titty. “Another brother and sister.”
“Not your blother,” said the Taicoon, putting his canary into its cage.
“Both my brothers,” said Titty desperately. “And a sister. And the rest of us. … Two more girls. … Sisters. … And their uncle. …”
“Sister to both blothers?” said the Taicoon.
“Yes,” said Titty. “But two other sisters …”
The one-time cook put in a word.
“You come from Melica?” asked the Taicoon.
“England,” said Titty. …“And America. … We were ship-wrecked. Our ship was burnt. We were in two boats. …”
“Two ships?”
“Two boats … little boats. … We were in one and Captain Flint and the others, the two sisters, were in the other. We got ashore yesterday and today we saw them. … We came and found their boat. …”
At last the Taicoon seemed to understand. “Captain James Flint?” he said. “Velly fat man? Velly stlong man? Velly mad man? Two wives? Lord Mayor San Flancisco. Pick up at sea? I got him.”
“Where? Where?” asked Titty.
“You see him plesently,” said the Taicoon. “My plisoners. All together. Velly happy. And now we feed my buds. I take you with me. …” He beckoned, and a Chinese came and stood listening while the Taicoon spoke to him. While he listened the man was fingering a queer instrument like two bamboo flutes joined together. The moment the Taicoon had stopped speaking, the man put the instrument to his lips and began whistling on it, a queer high-pitched, ear-splitting whistling on two notes.
“He’s signalling,” said Roger.
The man stopped, and from up in the hills came an answer, a thin high whistling like a curlew far away.
The Taicoon had turned to his bird-cages. The one-time cook grinned. “Taicoon Chang velly kind man,” he said. “He send for donks,” and, to make his meaning clear put a hand to each of his ears and lifted them as if to show that his ears were very long.
“What’s going to happen?” asked Roger.
“I think he’s got Captain Flint and Nancy and Peggy,” said Titty. “But it’s no good talking. We’d better keep quiet.”
“But what did he say about San Francisco? I thought …”
“Captain Flint’s been up to something,” said Titty. “You keep quiet. … And don’t let Gibber get near those bird-cages.”
“They’ve got some bananas,” said Roger, pointing to a huge cluster of ripe bananas from which the Chinese were helping themselves. “And Gibber’s pretty hungry. And so am I.”
The Taicoon, wanting Titty to admire his birds, turned at that moment, saw where Roger was pointing and laughed. One of the men with rifles offered the bunch of bananas to Roger, who took one for himself and broke another off for Gibber. The Taicoon gave an order. One of the men who had been searching the grass handed him his little bamboo box. The Taicoon carefully opened the lid. Something showed over the edge. He took it betw
een finger and thumb and offered it to the parrot.
“It’s a grasshopper,” said Roger. “Look out. Polly’s dead sure to nip his finger.”
But the parrot was more interested in the grasshopper. He cocked his head on one side, balanced himself on one leg on Titty’s finger, reached out and took the grasshopper and put it in his beak. He spat it out the next moment.
Titty, seeing the Taicoon’s disappointed face, was in a hurry to explain. “I’m very sorry,” she said. “Polly didn’t mean to be rude. He just isn’t accustomed to grasshoppers. This is what he eats.” The food-box in the parrot’s cage was empty, but Titty dug in a pocket and brought out a handful of parrot food and showed it to the Taicoon.
The Taicoon looked at it, separating one seed from another and nodding his head. He pointed to his canary and to the millet seed in its feeding trough. Then he pointed to the grasshopper and shook his head. It was clear that the canary, like the parrot, was not an eater of grasshoppers. Titty with a question pointed to the larks. The Taicoon took a grasshopper from his box and in a moment one of the larks was gulping it down. Titty and the Taicoon smiled at each other. The Taicoon took a sunflower seed out of Titty’s handful and offered it to the parrot. Titty’s heart stood still for a moment, for she did not know how Polly might behave. But the parrot took the sunflower seed, and even allowed the Taicoon to scratch the small feathers at the back of its head. The Taicoon was delighted. He talked away in a sort of pidgin English of which Titty understood one word in ten, and Titty talked to him in English of which the Taicoon understood about one word in twenty. But this did not matter. There were the birds. In Titty, the Taicoon felt he had found another bird-fancier, and while Roger and Gibber were having a good time with the bananas, the Taicoon and Titty were moving from cage to cage feeding the larks and not exactly talking but somehow managing to show good will.
And then, suddenly, everything changed.
There was a new burst of whistling, this time not from the hills but from somewhere up the river, a loud insistent whistling.
“Missee Lee,” said the Taicoon, stood up and looked at the man with the queer instrument who was standing rigid, listening.
The whistling stopped, and the man began talking to the Taicoon as if he were repeating a message. The Taicoon frowned and stared at Roger and Titty as if he were seeing them for the first time. The guards and the other Chinese were looking worried as if they had been found out in something they ought not to be doing.
“You go Missee Lee’s island?” said the Taicoon.
“We were on an island,” said Titty.
“You go Missee Lee’s temple?”
“Was it a temple?” said Titty. “I’m sorry. We really didn’t know.”
“Missee Lee know evellything,” said the Taicoon. “Tomollow you go see Missee Lee. Plisoners. All my plisoners go see Missee Lee tomollow. Why you go to Missee Lee’s island?”
The far away whistling began again. The Taicoon stamped his foot and spoke to his own signaller. The moment the whistling stopped, the man whistled a short answer.
“Missee Lee know too much,” said the Taicoon and then, with a flap of the hand as if to change the subject, he turned once more to the business of feeding grasshoppers to his larks.
“What’s happened?” asked Roger when he got a chance.
“I don’t know,” said Titty. “But it’s something to do with Missee Lee. That was her island we were on. And that house. …”
“Oh Gosh,” said Roger. “And I drew a picture in her book.”
CHAPTER VIII
TEN GONG TAICOON
THE day wore on. The Taicoon and his prisoners had drunk unsweetened tea from little bowls without handles and had eaten queer sticky sweetmeats handed round in a bamboo basket. The hoppers and searchers had been sent off again and had come back with fresh supplies of insects. More than once Titty had been on the point of asking the Taicoon to look for John and Susan, but had thought better of it. The Taicoon had said clearly enough that he had got Captain Flint, Nancy and Peggy. And then there had come that message that had made the Taicoon pretty cross, about Missee Lee wanting to see his prisoners. Did that mean that John and Susan had gone back to the island and that they were in Missee Lee’s hands already? And who and what was Missee Lee, with her Virgil and her Latin-English Dictionary and her orders that the Taicoon had to obey? Titty gave it up. The Taicoon had said that they were going to see Captain Flint. He would know what to do and Titty decided to wait until she saw him. In the meantime there was nothing to be done but to keep the Taicoon in a good temper, and to hope that Captain Flint would turn up pretty soon. “Presently,” the Taicoon had said, and that was a long time ago.
There was a sound of voices and running feet. Titty, who was letting the canary peck millet from her finger, looked hopefully up. “Here they are,” she said, but over the edge of the hollow came not Captain Flint and the others but a lot of the hoppers and searchers together with two men who were leading a couple of donkeys with wide wooden saddles, painted in red and blue and gold and hung with leather tassels.
There was a general stir. The Taicoon got to his feet. The grasshopper hunters were picking up the bird-cages. The guards were slinging their rifles on their backs. Four bearers were bringing the carved chair with the crimson cushions down into the hollow. A man was busy unfurling something that looked like a banner.
The Taicoon bowed politely to Titty and pointed to one of the donkeys. He bowed to Roger and pointed to the other.
“Gosh!” said Roger, who knew a lot more about boats than about riding.
“We’ve got to do it,” said Titty hurriedly. “And we’ve got to keep on somehow. They’d laugh like anything if we fell off.”
She was just thinking about getting the parrot’s cage on her back when the one-time cook took it from her. “Cally pallot,” he said. The donkey was close beside her. She felt someone take hold of her by the ankle and the next moment she found herself hove into the air and sitting on the saddle. She looked round to see Roger also mounted, looking very grave, with his legs sticking straight out on either side. The Taicoon was sitting in his chair, his white canary in a cage on his knee. The man had unrolled his banner, green, with an orange tiger with black stripes prancing upon it. The one-time cook explained. “This Tiger Island,” he said.
“Belong see plenty more buds,” said the Taicoon and gave an order.
The procession was on its way, marching up out of the hollow. First went the man with the tiger banner. Then some of the guards with rifles. Then the grasshopper-hunters, carrying the bird-cages so that the Taicoon could keep his eyes on them. Then, four bearers carrying the Taicoon in his chair shoulder high. Then came Titty, clutching at the high pommel of the wooden saddle, with the one-time cook walking at the donkey’s head carrying the ship’s parrot in his cage. Then came Roger, on his donkey, led by another of the men. Gibber was running alongside at the end of his lead but thought better of it, caught hold of the donkey’s tail and swung himself up behind Roger, gibbering angrily at the donkey which had only just missed him with a hind leg. Then came the rest of the guards. The Taicoon, Chang, of Tiger Island, was going home after giving his birds an outing.
They came up out of the hollow and marched across the open country towards the rocky shoulder of the hill. Presently they were moving along a well-marked track. Some of the Chinese started something that could not be called a song but was meant to help the feet. It was a sort of chant, something like the “Hi … yah … hee … yo …” of the coolies in the last port at which the Wild Cat had put in. But, though it may have helped the marching men, it did not ease the jolting of the donkeys. Titty found herself thinking in time with the chant, which was out of time with the jolting of her donkey. She began to wonder how soon she would have to roll out of that uncomfortable saddle just to keep her backbone still in one piece. She looked at Roger. He stared back with serious eyes. He could not manage a grin. He had just bitten his tongue.
The track came to the edge of the grass country and began to climb along the side of the hill. Keeping her teeth firmly clenched for fear of accidents, Titty, painfully jolting in her saddle, looked down on the strip of bare country to the belt of forest, to the water beyond it, to the great cliff beyond the water and the green speck of the little island where they had slept last night. She could see a wide river with faraway junks at anchor. Under the cliff, near the mouth of the river, was something like a fort, and on the nearer shore too there was a building on the water’s edge partly hidden by the trees. Somewhere down there were John and Susan. Between the jolts she wondered what had happened to them? What had they thought when they came back to the boats and found that she and Roger had disappeared? Had they gone back to the island? Had they been found by Missee Lee? Had they made Missee Lee send out that whistling signal about prisoners? What would they be thinking? If only it had been possible to let them know that Captain Flint and the other two were somewhere close at hand. Oh well (jerk) Captain Flint (jolt) would be jolly (jerk) glad (jolt) to know that (jolt) none of them had been drowned. (Ow, she was nearly off that time.) But if only John and Susan were there too.
And then she saw them, two white specks moving on the scorched grassland far below.
“Ahoy,” she shouted, with a hail that was meant to be a long one but was cut off short as a jolt of the donkey crashed her teeth together.
The Taicoon turned in his chair. The procession stopped.
“It’s John and Susan,” cried Titty, “down there.”
“Ahoy,” yelled Roger.
One of the small white figures waved a hand.
“Our brother and sister,” explained Titty to the Taicoon.
The Taicoon frowned. He gave an order, and two of his guards, their rifles swinging on their backs, went off, leaping and running, straight down the side of the hill. The four bearers lowered his chair and stretched themselves on the ground. The others rested, watching the two white figures walking side by side to meet the guards. The brown figures of the guards and the white figures of John and Susan met. The four came together to the foot of the hill and began climbing the steep slope to the road where the procession was waiting for them.
Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas Page 10