THE FLYING BOAT.
by Herbert Strang.
CHAPTER I
ENTER MR. TING
The term was drawing to its close, and all Cheltonia, from the senior prefect to the smallest whipper-snapper of the fourth form, was in the playing-field, practising for the sports. The centre of the greatest interest was perhaps the spot where certain big fellows of the sixth were engaged in a friendly preliminary rivalry for the high jump. There was Reginald Hattersley-Carr, who stood six feet two in his socks--a strapping young giant whom small boys gazed up at with awe, the despair of the masters, the object of a certain dislike among the prefects for his sw.a.n.k. There was Pierce Errington, who beside the holder of the double-barrelled name looked small, though his height was five feet ten.
He was the most popular fellow in the school--dangerously popular for one of his temperament, for he was easy-going, mercurial, speaking and acting impulsively, too often rash, with a streak of the gambler in his composition--though, to be sure, he had little chance of being unduly speculative on his school pocket-money. And there was Ted Burroughs, Errington"s particular chum, equally tall, almost equally popular, but as different in temperament as any man could be. Burroughs was popular because he was such a downright fellow, open as the day, a fellow everybody trusted. He always thought before he spoke, and acted with deliberation. He held very strong views as to what he or others should do or should not do, and carried out his principles with a firm will.
As was natural, he did not easily make allowances for other men"s weaknesses, except in the case of Errington, to whom he would concede more than to any one else.
It was known that the high jump would fall to one of these three, and their performances at the bar were watched with keen appreciation by a small crowd of boys in the lower school. Hattersley-Carr had just cleared five feet three, and Errington was stripping off his sweater, in preparation for taking his run, when the school porter came up, an old soldier as stiff as a ramrod, and addressed him.
"A gentleman to see you," he said.
"Oh, bother!" said Errington. "Who is it, Perkins?"
"A stranger to me; a sort of foreigner by the look of him: in fact, what you might call a heathen Chinee."
"Bless my aunt!" Errington e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with a droll look at Burroughs.
"Did you tell him where I was?"
"I said as how you were jumping, most like; and he said as how he"d like to see; not much of a sport, either, by the looks of him."
Now hospitality to visitors was a tradition at Cheltonia, and with the eyes of the small boys upon him Errington knew that he must accept the inevitable. But it was the law of the place that an afternoon visitor should be invited to tea at the prefects" table, and Errington, with a school-boy"s susceptibility, at once foresaw a good deal of quizzing and subsequent "chipping" at the embarra.s.sing presence of a Chinaman.
"Rotten nuisance!" he said, in an undertone. "Still!"--and with a half-humorous shrug he put on his sweater and blazer and walked across to the school-house.
A few minutes afterwards there was a buzz of excitement all over the field when he was seen returning with his visitor. It was an unprecedented spectacle. Beside the tall athletic form of Errington walked with quick and springy steps a little Chinaman, not much above five feet in height, slight, thin, with a very long pigtail, and a keen, alert countenance that wore an expression of vivid curiosity. There was a t.i.ttering and nudging among the smaller boys, who, however, did not desist from their occupations, and only shot an occasional side-long glance at the stranger. The members of the sixth looked on with a carefully cultivated affectation of indifference. Errington led the Chinaman to the spot where Burroughs and Hattersley-Carr were standing together, and with a pleasant smile introduced his school-fellows.
"This is Burroughs--you"ve heard of him. They call him the Mole here.
Hats--Hattersley-Carr, our strong man--Mr. Ting."
Burroughs shook hands with the Chinaman, who shot a keen look at him, as if trying to discover why, his name being Burroughs, he was called the Mole. Hattersley-Carr had his hands behind him, gave the visitor the faintest possible acknowledgment, and then looked over his head, as if he no longer existed. Errington afterwards declared that he sniffed.
Burroughs caught a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in Mr. Ting"s face, as, glancing up at the supercilious young giant towering above him, he said, in a high-pitched jerky voice, but an unexceptionable accent--
"Once a servant of Mr. Ellington"s father, sir."
Hattersley-Carr paid no attention. Errington flushed, and was on the point of rapping out something that would hardly have been pleasant, when Burroughs interposed.
"Buck up, Pidge; we"ve both cleared half-an-inch higher," he said. "The tea-bell will ring in a jiffy."
Whether it was that Errington was in specially good form, or that he was spurred on by Hattersley-Carr"s impoliteness, it is a fact that during the next twenty minutes he twice outdid his two compet.i.tors by half-an-inch. Mr. Ting was as keen a spectator as any boy in the crowd, which, now that the jumping furnished a pretext, had grown much larger by the afflux of many who were more interested in the Chinaman. The bar stood at five feet five, and Hattersley-Carr had just failed to clear it at the third attempt, when Mr. Ting turned to Burroughs at his side, and said--
"Most intelesting. Is it allowed for visitors to tly?"
"Why, certainly," replied Burroughs, hiding his astonishment with an effort. "But----" He glanced down at the clumsy-looking Chinese boots.
"I should like to tly," said the Chinaman, and, lifting his feet one after the other, he took off his boots, tucked up his robe about his loins, and walked to the spot where Hattersley-Carr had begun his run.
There was what the reporters call a "sensation" among the crowd. The idea of this little foreigner, a Chinaman, actually with a pigtail, and without running shorts, attempting a jump at which Hats had failed, seemed to them the best of jokes, and they lined up on each side, prepared to laugh, and pick up the little man when he fell, and give him an ironical cheer. Hattersley-Carr stood by one post, his hands on his hips, his lips wrinkled in a sneer. Errington and the Mole stood together near him, the former"s face shaded with annoyance, for it was bad enough to have to entertain a Chinaman at all, without the additional ridicule which a sorry failure at the jumping bar would entail. The expression on Burroughs" countenance was simply one of sober amus.e.m.e.nt.
A dead silence fell upon the crowd. Mr. Ting had halted, and was tucking up the long sleeves of his tunic, and putting on a pair of spectacles.
He began to run, his feet twinkling over the gra.s.s. His pace quickened; within three yards of the bar he seemed to crouch almost to the ground; then up he flew, his pigtail flying out behind him, the eyes and mouths of the small boys opening wider with amazement. There was the bar, steady in its sockets; and there was Mr. Ting, standing erect on the other side, his features rippling with a Chinese smile.
Then the cheers broke out. "Good old Chinaman!" "Well _done_, sir!"
"Ripping old sport!" (Mr. Ting was thirty-five.) A dozen rushed forward to shake hands with him; a score flung their caps into the air; a hundred roared and yelled like Red Indians. Errington grinned at Hattersley-Carr; Burroughs stepped forward quietly with Mr. Ting"s boots; and Hattersley-Carr stood in the same att.i.tude, with the same supercilious curl of the lip.
The warning bell rang; there was a quarter of an hour for changing before tea, and the throng trooped off, some to the changing-rooms, the idle onlookers to talk over the Chinaman"s performance. Burroughs led Mr. Ting towards the house, Errington and Hattersley-Carr following together.
"You _silly_ a.s.s!" said Errington.
"How much?"
"He was my father"s comprador--confidential secretary, factotum, almost partner."
"Well, he said servant: how was I to know your rotten Chinese ways?"
"Anyhow, you shouldn"t be such a beastly sn.o.b."
And at that Hattersley-Carr turned on his heel and strode alone out of the field, and out of this history.
CHAPTER II
ERRINGTON MAKES A FRIEND
Pierce Errington, known at school as Pidge, was the son of a Shanghai merchant who at one time had been reputed to be the wealthiest European in China. But Mr. Errington was his own worst enemy. Generous and impulsive, he lacked balance; and though he had a positive genius for business, at times his business faculties seemed to desert him, and he showed a rashness and audacity in speculative ventures that amazed his friends. While his wife lived, this trait was not allowed to over-a.s.sert itself, but after her death he became more and more reckless, and ultimately lost almost all his fortune in one black year.
When he died suddenly of heart failure, it was found that he had left just enough to complete his only son"s education, and to provide the boy with a trifle of pocket-money when he went out into the world.
Pierce was twelve years old, and at a preparatory school in England, at the time of his father"s death. He was committed to the guardianship of a distant relative, a merchant in the City, who fulfilled his trust with scrupulous honour, but with no excess of kindness. Pierce became very sick of hearing from his guardian, at least once a term and more often during the holidays, that he had no prospects, and must look to himself for his future. "I"m a self-made man," the merchant would say proudly; and Pierce, when he was a public school-boy and began to have ideas of his own, would think: "A precious bad job you made of it."
Mr. Errington"s oldest friend was a fellow merchant in Shanghai. John Burroughs was a plodder. He might never be so rich as Errington, but certainly he would never be so poor. He had often tried to check his friend"s wildest speculations, and then Errington would laugh, and thank him, and say that it was no good. The two men were about the same age, and their sons were born within a few months of each other. When the time came for them to go to England for education, the boys were sent to the same preparatory school, and entered at the same public school.
They had been companions since babyhood, and the friendship between the fathers seemed to be only intensified in the sons. They were the greatest chums, and being equally good at sports and their books, they had kept pace with each other through the schools, and reached the sixth and the dignity of prefect at Cheltonia together. Each was now in his eighteenth year, and neither had been back to China since they left it, eight years before.
During those eight years, Errington had received very regular letters from a correspondent who signed himself Ting Chuh. At first these letters bored him; as he grew older they amused him; and latterly they had given rise to a certain perplexed curiosity. Why did Ting Chuh take so great an interest in him? Why was he continually poking his funny old proverbs at him? "An ox with a ring in his nose--so is the steady man." "Remember never to feel after a pin on the bottom of the ocean."
"It is folly to covet another man"s horse and to lose your own ox."
Sentences like these occurred in all Mr. Ting"s letters--all warning him against attempting impossibilities, or leaving the substance for the shadow, or letting his impulses run away with him. Of course Errington knew that Mr. Ting had occupied a special position in his father"s household, and he remembered vaguely that he had been quite fond of Tingy in his early years; but he was at a loss to understand why the Chinaman appeared to have const.i.tuted himself his moral guardian--why he sent for copies of all his school reports, and wrote him such exceedingly dull comments on them. "But he"s a good sort," he would say to himself, and forget the homily and Mr. Ting until the next letter arrived.
Ting Chuh had made money while Mr. Errington lost it, through sheer native shrewdness and industry. The relations between master and man were very close and confidential. On Mr. Errington"s death, Mr. Ting set up for himself in business, and acquired wealth with wonderful rapidity; everybody trading on the China coast knew him and trusted him, except some few "mean whites" who were incapable of any decent feeling towards a Chinaman. He had now taken advantage of a business visit to London to call upon the boy in whose welfare he was more deeply interested than the boy himself knew. The time was approaching when Errington must leave school, and Mr. Ting had certain private reasons for wishing to judge by personal observation what manner of man had developed from the little boy of ten whom he had last seen on the deck of a home-going liner.
Errington"s uneasy forebodings as to the result of the Chinaman"s appearance at the tea-table were agreeably dispelled. Mr. Ting was the hero of the hour. He talked fluently, with an occasional quaintness of expression that lent a charm to his conversation; and when it came out casually that his business in England had involved several interviews with the Foreign Secretary, he went up as high in the estimation of the prefects as his athletic feat had carried him with the younger boys.
Moreover, at his departure he showed himself very generous and discriminating in the way of tips, and he was voted a jolly good sort by the school. He was particularly cordial in his good-bye to Ted Burroughs.