Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator Part 15

"Come on, fellows," he yelled, "get busy here and help me build a fort.

We've got to roll some of these rocks into position in a little less than no time, so we can give them an argument when they arrive."

"Oh, what's the use?" said the man whom they had rescued, in a hopeless voice. "We haven't got any chance against them. We might as well surrender first as last, and take our chances of escaping afterward."

"Why, man, what are you talking about?" said d.i.c.k, scornfully. "You don't think we're going to give in without a struggle, do you, when we have some shelter here and guns in our hands? Not on your life, we won't, and don't you forget it."

"Well, I was just giving you my opinion, that's all," said the man, who, it must be confessed, spoke in a rather shamefaced manner. "We're sure to be butchered if we follow out your plan, though, mark my words."

"Well, we'll at least send some of them to their last accounting before they do get to us," said Bert. "Step lively, now, and help us, instead of talking in that fool way."

While this talk had been going on the boys had rolled several big boulders up against the one that had already offered them such timely aid, in such a manner as to form a little enclosed s.p.a.ce or fort. In their excitement and pressing need they accomplished feats of strength that under ordinary circ.u.mstances they would not even have attempted or believed possible.

Soon they had made every preparation they could think of, and with set teeth and a resolve to fight to the last gasp waited the coming of the pursuing cannibals.

Soon they could hear them rushing through the forest, exchanging deep-throated cries, and a few moments later they burst into the clearing. When they saw the preparations that had been made for their reception, however, they paused, and some pointed excitedly toward the three dead wolves. It was evident that they had been more prepared to see the mangled bodies of their erstwhile prisoner and his rescuers, rather than what they actually did find.

Bert, seeing that they were disconcerted, decided to open hostilities.

With a wild yell, he started firing his revolver toward the closely-grouped savages, taking careful aim with each shot. A much poorer shot than Bert would have had difficulty in missing such a mark, and every bullet took deadly effect.

All at once panic seemed to seize on the savages, and they rushed madly back into the jungle. Of course, Bert wasted no more valuable ammunition firing at an unseen enemy, and a breathless hush fell over the scene.

At first the little party expected the savages to renew the conflict, but the time wore slowly on and nothing of the kind happened. They kept a keen lookout to guard against a surprise, but none was attempted.

At length dawn broke, and the sun had never been so welcome to the boys as it was then. In the light of day their experience seemed like an awful dream, or would have seemed so, had it not been for the bodies of the three wolves.

The besieged party held a "pow-wow," and as it was clear that they could not stay where they were indefinitely, they decided to make a break for the ship without further delay.

After a careful reconnoitering of the path, they ventured into it with many misgivings, but could see no sign of the head hunters. They made the best possible speed, and it was not very long before they reached the beach.

Needless to say, the whole ship's company had been greatly worried over their absence, but their relief was correspondingly great at their safe return. The captain had reinforced Mr. Miller's complement of men with orders to go in search of the three boys as soon as morning broke. He was prepared to hold them strictly to account for what he thought their rashness, but repressed his censure when he heard their story. The boat was swung inboard, the _Fearless_ gathered way, and the island receding to a point was soon lost to sight in the distance.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAND OF SURPRISES

"Better fifty years of Europe Than a cycle of Cathay,"

murmured d.i.c.k, yielding once more to his chronic habit of quotation.

They had reached the gateway of Southern China and cast anchor in the harbor of Hong-Kong. It had been a day of great bustle and confusion, and all hands had been kept busy from the time the anchor chain rattled in the hawse-hole until dusk began to creep over the waters of the bay.

The great cranes had groaned with their loads as they swung up the bales and boxes from the hold and transferred them to the lighters that swarmed about the sides of the _Fearless_. The pa.s.sengers, eager once more to be on _terra firma_ after the long voyage, had gone ash.o.r.e, and the boat was left to the officers and crew. These had been kept on board by the manifold duties pertaining to their position, but were eagerly looking forward to the morrow, when the coveted sh.o.r.e leave would be granted in relays to the crew, while the officers would be free to go and come almost as they pleased. It was figured that even with the greatest expedition in discharging cargo and taking on the return shipments for the "States," it would be nearly or quite a week before they began their return journey, and they promised themselves in that interval to make the most of their stay in this capital of the Oriental commercial world.

Now, as dusk fell over the waters, the boys sat at the rail and gazed eagerly at the strange sights that surrounded them. The harbor was full of shipping gathered from the four quarters of the world. On every side great liners lay, ablaze with light from every cabin and porthole.

Native junks darted about saucily here and there, while queer yellow faces looked up at them from behind the mats and lateen-rigged sails.

The unforgettable smells of an Eastern harbor a.s.sailed their nostrils.

The high pitched nasal chatter of the boatmen wrangling or jesting, was unlike anything they had ever before heard or imagined. Everything was so radically different from all their previous experiences that it seemed as though they must have kneeled on the magic carpet of Solomon and been transported bodily to a new world.

Before them lay the city itself glowing with myriad lights. The British concession with its splendid buildings, its immense official residences, its broad boulevards, might have been a typical European city set down in these strange Oriental surroundings. But around and beyond this lay the real China, almost as much untouched and uninfluenced by these modern developments as it had been for centuries. Great hills surrounded the city on every side, and temples and paG.o.das uprearing their quaint sloping roofs indicated the location of the original native quarters. In the distance they could see the lights of the little cable railway that carried pa.s.sengers to the heights from which they could obtain a magnificent view of the harbor and the surrounding country.

The ship's doctor had come up just as d.i.c.k had finished his quotation.

"Yes," he a.s.sented, as he lit a fresh cigar and drew his chair into the center of the group. "The poet might have gone further than that and intimated that even one year of Europe would be better than a 'cycle of Cathay.' There's more progress ordinarily in a single year among Europeans than there is here in twenty centuries."

They gladly made room for him. The doctor was a general favorite and a cosmopolitan in all that that word implies. He seemed to have been everywhere and seen everything. In the course of his profession he had been all over the world, and knew it in every nook and corner. He had a wealth of interesting experiences, and had the gift of telling them, when in congenial company, in so vivid and graphic a way, that it made the hearer feel as though he himself had taken part in the events narrated.

"Of course," went on the doctor, "it all depends on the point of view.

If progress is a good thing, we have the advantage of the Chinese. If it is a bad thing, they have the advantage of us. Now, they say it is a bad thing. With them 'whatever is is right.' Tradition is everything. What was good enough for their parents is good enough for them. They live entirely in the past. They cultivate the ground in the same way and with the same implements that their fathers did two thousand years ago. To change is to offend the G.o.ds. All modern inventions are devices of the devil. Every event in their whole existence is governed by cut and dried rules. From the moment of birth to that of death, life moves along one fixed groove. They don't want railroads or telephones or phonographs or machinery or anything else that to us seems a necessity of life.

Whatever they have of these has been forced upon them by foreigners. A little while ago they bought up a small railroad that the French had built, paid a big advance on the original price, and then threw rails and locomotives into the sea."

"Even our 'high finance' railroad wreckers in Wall Street wouldn't go quite as far as that," laughed Tom.

"No," smiled the doctor, "they'd do it just as effectively, but in a different way."

"And yet," interposed d.i.c.k, "the Chinese don't seem to me to be a stupid race. We had one or two in our College and they were just as bright as anyone there."

"They're not stupid by any means," replied the doctor. "There was a time, thousands of years ago, when they were the very leaders of civilization. They had their inventors and their experimenters. Why, they found out all about gunpowder and printing and the mariner's compa.s.s, when Europe was sunk in the lowest depths of ignorance. At that time, the intellect of the people was active and productive. But then they seem to have had a stroke of paralysis, and they've never gotten over it."

"It always seemed to me," said Bert, "that 'Alice in Wonderland' should really have been called 'Alice in China-land.' She and her mad hatter and the March hare and the Cheshire cat would certainly have felt at home here."

"True enough," rejoined the doctor. "It isn't without reason that this has been called 'Topsy-turvy' land."

"For instance," he went on, "you could never get into a Chinaman's head what Shakespeare meant when he said: 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' The roses in China have no fragrance.

"Take some other ill.u.s.trations. When we give a banquet, the guest of honor is seated at the right of the host as a special mark of distinction. In China, he is placed at the left. If you meet a friend in the street, out goes your hand in greeting. The Chinaman shakes hands with himself. If an American or European is perplexed about anything he scratches his head. When the Chinaman is puzzled, he scratches his foot."

The comicality of this idea was too much for the gravity of the boys--never very hard to upset at any time--and they roared with laughter. Their laugh was echoed more moderately by Captain Manning, who, relieved at last of the many duties attendant upon the first day in port, had come up behind them and now joined the group. The necessity of keeping up the strain and dignity of his official position had largely disappeared with the casting of the anchor, and it was more with the easy democracy and good fellowship of the ordinary pa.s.senger that he joined in the conversation.

"They have another queer custom in China that bears right on the doctor's profession," he said, with a sly twinkle in his eye. "Here they employ a doctor by the year, but they only pay him as long as the employer keeps well. The minute he gets sick, the doctor's salary ceases, and he has to work like sixty to get him well in a hurry, so that his pay may be resumed."

"Well," retorted the doctor, "I don't know but they have the better of us there. It is certainly an incentive to get the patient well at once, instead of spinning out the case for the sake of a bigger fee. I know a lot of fashionable doctors whose income would go down amazingly if that system were introduced in America."

"You'll find, too," said the captain, "that the Chinaman's idea of what is good to eat is almost as different from ours as their other conceptions. There's just about one thing in which they agree with us, and that is on the question of pork. They are very fond of this, and you have all read, no doubt, the story told by Charles Lamb of the Chinese peasant whose cabin was burned, together with a pig who had shared it with the family. His despair at the loss of the pig was soon turned to rejoicing when he smelled the savory odor of roast pork and learned for the first time how good it was. But, outside of that, we don't have much in common. They care very little for beef or mutton. To make up for this, however, they have made a good many discoveries in the culinary line that they regard as delicacies, but that you won't find in any American cook book. Rats and mice and edible birds' nests and shark fins are served in a great variety of ways, and those foreigners who have had the courage to wade through the whole Chinese bill of fare say it is surprising to find out how good it is. After all, you can get used to anything, and we Europeans and Americans are becoming broader in our tastes than we used to be. Horse meat is almost as common as beef in Berlin; dogs are not disdained in some parts of France, and only the other day I read of a banquet in Paris where they served stuffed angleworms and p.r.o.nounced them good."

"I imagine it will be a good while, however, before we get to the point where rats and mice are served in our restaurants," said Tom, with a grimace.

"Yes," rejoined the captain, "we'll probably draw the line there and never step over it. But you'll have a chance pretty soon to sample Chinese cooking, and if you ask no questions and eat what is set before you, you will probably find it surprisingly good. 'What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over,' you know. And when you come to the desserts, you will find that there are no finer sweetmeats in the world than those served at Chinese tables."

"Another thing that seems queer to us Western people," said the doctor, "is their idea of the seat of intellect. We regard it as the head. They place it in the stomach. If the Chinaman gets off what he thinks to be a witty thing, he pats his stomach in approval."

"I suppose when his head is cut off, he still goes on thinking," grinned Tom.

"That wouldn't phase a Chinaman for a minute," answered the doctor.

"He'd retort by asking you if you'd go on thinking if they cut you in half."