The valley of eyes unseen
I boarded the Nanking train, even if they did not follow me I should
have given away the route you had followed--always supposing these men
had connected me with you, which seemed tolerably plain. Then a device
occurred to me. There was a local train standing in the station. It was
due to leave for Wusung at ten-fifty. I regarded this as proof that
the gods were on my side. I went to the booking office and bought a
ticket for Wusung, intending to board that train, walk straight through
it, and gain my own by way of the track, trusting to providence and a
villainously illuminated station; but my two rascals were too quick for
me. I saw them get into a compartment about four distant from mine. The
situation, gentlemen, was growing strained, and I had already decided
not to travel at all that night, but to slink back into the city and
try again later, when yet another subterfuge came to my mind. I knew
that I could not leave that train without detection--at any rate so
long as it stood in the station. But if I waited until it started, and
then jumped, I might yet outwit the enemy. This course I followed,
though without the smooth success I had hoped. I waited too long before
jumping, and came the very disastrous cropper which resulted in this
bloody cockscomb you have been good enough to patch for me; and even
at that sacrifice I did not elude my two ruffians. As I fell I had a
blurred consciousness of other bodies falling from the train, and I
know that they fell with more agility than I did, for they were up and
upon me in an instant. I began to lay about me, but not dangerously,
for my head was swimming and I had frankly given up hope of getting out
of the imbroglio alive, when I realised that there was more in it than
at first appeared. There were three mirky shapes on that mirky railway
track--we were over a hundred yards out of the station--but one of
them was fighting on my side. I plucked up heart, and gave one of the
roughs such a taste of the fighting blood of the Poynings that he fell
backwards across the metals, struck his head, and lay still. The other
appeared to have had the worst of it with my ally, and the next thing I
knew, I had grabbed the suitcase and was bundling back along the track
with Lo Eng--to whose battling abilities throughout I would take this
occasion to bear the very warmest testimony. You'd better ask him what
happened after, for the world was waltzing around me again, and my
recollection becomes valueless as evidence.'
Lo Eng waited for a sign from Philipson, then delivered himself to this
effect:
'I feared that Mr. Poyning would be followed back into Shanghai, so
I followed him myself, all the way to the station. There it was as I
feared. I do not know how those men knew he was the gentleman they were
looking for, but they did know. I could see that he knew he was being
observed by them too. They were so intent on Mr. Poyning that they did
not see me get into the next carriage of the Wusung train. When they
jumped out, I jumped also. Then we fought, as Mr. Poyning has said, and
left those two men on the rails and ran back to the Nanking train. It
was just moving. He was so injured that he could not get up from the
ground, so I climbed into the train with the suit case and pulled him
up behind me. It was very difficult to do, and by the time we were on
board, the train was moving too fast for me to get off again. I had no
ticket, but Mr. Poyning paid my fare to the conductor. Then I bound
his head, which was bleeding, and he fell asleep until we reached here
this morning. We have not been followed since.'
Philipson rose from his chair and patted the servant's shaven head.
'You have done well, Lo Eng,' he said. 'You are a boy to be proud of.'
The expression of dog-like fidelity on the man's face deepened. 'Master
is going up country?' he said.
'Such is the case, Lo Eng,' replied Philipson, his eye twinkling.
The boy looked down at his demurely folded hands. 'There is no house in
Shanghai for me to guard now,' he murmured. 'The car was destroyed too.'
'Eh? That's the way the wind blows, is it? Very well, we shall be glad
of such a trusty servant, I have no doubt. You will go down and stay on
board the launch with Ah Sing now, and wait for orders.'
As soon as Lo Eng was out of the room, Philipson took Poyning's hand
and shook it. 'I am eternally beholden to you, Poyning,' he said
warmly. 'You have handled this business not only with discretion but
with a most commendable quantity of pluck. You had better lie down now
till breakfast is ready. After that, we will go into the future.'
'Well,' said Philipson to me, when we were alone, 'what think you?
Should we take the youth into partnership?'
'Seems to me,' I said, 'the question is, will he take us?'
Philipson had unlocked the suit case by the key Poyning left with him,
and was unwrapping the instruments from several yards of cotton wool.
Both came out quite undamaged.
'I am inclined to think,' said Saunders Philipson deliberatively, 'that
that _is_ the more correct way to put it.'
CHAPTER VI
HOW WE JOURNEYED TO THE OBSCURE TOWN OF KIAI
When Poyning came in to breakfast, much renovated, we sat down to one
of the jolliest meals I ever remember. Philipson steered clear of
the subject of our forthcoming journey yet, but kept up a brisk fire
of yarns of his former experiences in the East; and I for one had to
admit that if I flattered myself I knew something about the great
yellow lands from Ladakh on the roof of the world to Kamchatka of the
frozen north, my knowledge was mere schoolboy geography to Saunders
Philipson's. Then we pushed away our plates and lit up, and Philipson
plunged into the business ahead of us, laying the whole story before
Poyning exactly as I had heard it myself. The junior partner listened
with the sort of negligent alertness he had shown when taking his
orders for the Shanghai commission, but I could see, underneath this,
that the story excited him a good deal more than it had me.
'Well, there you are, Poyning,' concluded our leader, 'You know all
the ascertained facts now. It will be a dangerous, death-or-glory
business--but at least a profitable one, if my suspicions are well
founded.'
The boy shrugged his shoulders. 'Diamonds would be an agreeable
incidental, certainly,' he said, 'but I should be perfectly ready to
risk my life going to that valley if there were no mention of gems in
the legend at all.'
Poyning said this in such a serious and decided tone that you might
almost have fancied he meant more than he said.
'Then you're with us?' queried Philipson.
'I am,' said Stephen Poyning firmly.
We shook hands on the bargain and swore, all three of us, to tear the
mystery out of that shadowy land behind the mountains or add our names
to the long list of explorers who have died of curiosity.
The day was spent in a lively bustle of preparation. If Philipson
was upset over the destruction of thousands of pounds' worth of his
property in Shanghai, he gave precious small sign of his chagrin; on
the contrary, he seemed to look on that business as a useful warning
not to underestimate the vigour and vindictiveness of our enemies. As
for the bi-lingual Lo Eng, he proved himself a pearl of price. All
that day he was in and out of the city buying stores, thus enabling
the rest of us to lie doggo--no small boon to folk in our case. Backed
by Philipson's deep purse he procured food, petrol, and ammunition
with despatch and discretion--so much so that I don't think even the
hawk-eyed customs officers, always watchful for the gun-runner and
opium-smuggler and similar law-breakers, ever knew of our stay in the
port. But to make sure of secrecy, when the time came to leave we
stole out of our creek propelled by the pair of small oars the launch
carried; and I've no doubt that in the fickle light before moonrise we
passed easily enough for one of the innumerable native boats thronging
the mouth of the inlet and the margins of Yangtze River itself.
We rowed well out into the stream, turned our nose westward, and
proceeded on a throttled engine until we had left Nanking a mile or
two over our quarter. Then began our long tussle with the down-rolling
might of Yangtze Kiang. Philipson made for the north bank, where,
thanks to our shallow draught, we could hug the shore even closer
than the interminable string of native junks, which, like ourselves,
were there to avoid the full strength of the current. These craft we
overhauled by the hundred, and now and then passed the lights of a
river steamer out in midstream going three miles to her two. Philipson
kept the tiller, Poyning and I sat down in the well, while Ah Sing
tended the engine and Lo Eng, in the cabin, got ready the beds against
such time as we should turn in. My last recollections before dropping
off in my bunk were the lady-like snores of Poyning as he lay tucked up
opposite me, and the chuckle of the wine which Philipson--tiller in one
hand and drinking outfit close by the other--poured out for himself. He
hadn't forgotten this among the preparations for departure--I think,
indeed, that before squaring up with mine hostess of Nanking, Saunders
Philipson bought the remainder of her cellar in a lot.
Poyning being a casualty, he was to stand no watch that night, and
the rest of us arranged the spells so that of Philipson and Ah Sing,
our best navigators, always one was at the helm. I completed my first
trick with the latter at four o'clock. It wasn't yet dawn, but there
had already sprung out of the east a wide fawn-coloured wash which
battled with the light of the setting moon. On our starboard bow
stretched untold miles of flat rice-land, broken here and there by
trees that seemed to rise straight from the silver bosom of the flood.
Great sailing junks, with their steep poops and huge chocolate lugsails
and three masts raking like the ribs of a fan, loomed vague and dark
against the neutral tints of the river. Then, in a wink, the moon
whitened, there was a glory of brightness over the mighty expanse of
water in our wake; and where one instant before all had been veiled in
a gossamer grey mist, now everything took on sudden startling tinges of
orange, opal, and pink. The greenery of the river bank became a golden
green, the vast flood flared up into bright mustard, and hull and mast
and sail of the native shipping sharpened into clean-cut blotches of
Vandyke brown. Wisps of smoke rose from the poop braziers of these
craft as the blue-cottoned junkmen cooked their breakfast, and now and
again a shrill chanty came to us across the water as they put out the
long bow-sweep and pulled upon it three and four abreast.
Philipson was in rare spirits when he came aft to relieve me. I stayed
with him a few minutes while he picked up his landmarks and reckoned
the amount of westing we had made in the night.
'Seventy miles if it is an inch,' said Saunders Philipson. 'The best
she has ever done.'
'Where d'you expect to fetch to-day?'
'Kiukiang, bar hitches. By about dusk. And Hankow the same time
to-morrow. It could not fall out better. All serene, Mirlees. Get your
sleep, for we shall want that cabin to feed in before long.'
The day passed without event, and so close to our leader's schedule
that we might have been a passenger service. Hour after hour we forged
ahead, the engine running smoothly and tirelessly as the wings of
the great gulls over our heads, and a little before nightfall we had
drawn within view of the hills that reach away south of Kiukiang. Here
we tied up in an inlet at one end of the bund, and slept on board,
creeping out again before the break of day, and pushing on up stream
till dusk.