One day Mr. Ting met Errington in the street as if by chance: in reality he had waylaid him.
"Getting on nicely?" he said.
"First chop," replied Errington, with a laugh: he had picked up some pidgin English.
"That is good. You have many flends," said the Chinaman. "Good flends are a delight in plospelity, and a stay in advessity. Bad flends--but of course you have none. Leinhadt is, of course, no flend of yours."
"I rather think he is," said Errington, nettled at once. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, you may eat with a flend, and talk to a flend, and play cards with flends, at home; but the men you play cards with away from home, they are not often flends."
"Look here, Mr. Ting, I don"t understand what you are driving at. I play cards with Mr. Reinhardt: you seem to know it; have you got anything to say against it? Is he a card-sharper? Has he swindled you or any one else? If he has, you"d better say so, and then I shall know what to do."
"He has not swindled me, or any one else, that I can prove."
"Well then," cried the lad hotly, "I"ll thank you to mind your own business. You bored me with your sermons when I was a kid at school; but I"m no longer a schoolboy, and I tell you flatly I won"t be watched and preached at by you, if you were ten times my father"s friend. I"m quite able to take care of myself."
"I could wish nothing better," said the Chinaman quietly. "I was your father"s flend, and I hope I shall always be yours."
Errington had already repented of his outburst, and Mr. Ting"s dignified reception of it made him feel ashamed of himself.
"Of course you are," he said. "I was always a hot-tempered brute; I"m sorry."
And the two parted on the best of terms.
After about a year, when both Errington and Burroughs had began to get a grip of their work, the former came home from the office one evening, and seeking his chum in the little den they shared, said in a tone of elation--
"I say, old man, I"m getting on. They"re going to raise my screw and transfer me to Sui-Fu.
"Under Reinhardt?" asked Burroughs quickly.
"Yes. I shouldn"t wonder if he got me the crib. He has to be away a great deal, and though there"s a capable comprador, they seem to think a European ought to be on the spot. I wish you were coming too."
"I should like it. It"s a lift for you, Pidge, and I"m glad."
Errington talked on in his impulsive way about what he would do, and how he would make things hum, while Burroughs listened and said little. He had already made up his mind to go with Errington if possible; scarcely confessing it even to himself, he wanted to keep an eye on his friend when he came directly under the influence of the German; but he did not wish to hint at the possibility of arranging a transfer for himself until he had spoken to his father.
Late that night, when the rest had retired, he went to his father"s study.
"Well, Ted, what is it?" said Mr. Burroughs, looking up from some papers.
"I"d like to go up with Pidge if you can manage it, Dad," replied the boy, coming straight to the point.
"You would, eh? What an excitable fellow he is, Ted! He talked about nothing else at dinner--or hardly anything, and it"s all done so pleasantly you can"t resent it. Well, you want to go: any particular reason?"
"Well, you see, we"ve always been together, and ... Dad, why do people dislike Reinhardt?"
"Off at a tangent, aren"t you? I think it"s a case of "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell." Some say he"s got a brute of a temper behind his pleasant manner, and he"s rather fond of cards; but I never heard any definite charge against him."
"Well, I detest the fellow, and I don"t like to think of Pidge constantly in his company. You"ve seen enough of Pidge to know what I mean, dad, so I"m not giving him away. He"s a jolly good sort, the best of pals, wouldn"t do a dirty trick to any one; but he"s hasty, makes friends too easily, thinks every one is as decent as himself----"
"In short, you think he wants looking after."
"Oh, I"m not a.s.s enough to want to hold him on a lead; but I do think if I were with him I might be useful. You see, if Reinhardt is a bad egg, and Pidge finds it out, he"ll never look at him again--if he doesn"t give him a kicking by way of good-bye. If I"m on the spot, I can keep my eye on the fellow, and perhaps open Pidge"s eyes in time. Can"t you shift me to your branch there?"
"You would have gone there anyhow in course of time, so if you"re set on it I shan"t raise any objection. It won"t do you any harm to be in charge of a branch, and with Sing Wen there--a capital fellow--you won"t have the chance to make many mistakes. We"ll consider that settled, then."
"Thanks, Dad; I thought you"d agree. Pidge will be glad: he said he wished I was coming too."
"He won"t resent the curb, eh?"
"He won"t feel it if I can help it. He"s very touchy, and I learnt a lesson on the boat. Good-night, Dad."
"Good-night, old man. By the way, in case I forget it when you go, always carry a revolver with you up there, but never use it except as a last resort. That"s a good working rule for a European in an up-river district. Good-night."
Another person besides Ted Burroughs was uneasy at the prospective transference of Errington to Sui-Fu. Mr. Ting, who knew everything that was going on, or at least as much as he wished to know, heard of it as soon as it was decided, and would have taken some trouble to prevent it if he could have urged anything definite against the character of Reinhardt. But he was a very discreet person. He had reasons of his own for maintaining cordial relations with Errington, and reflected that even at a distance he could still find means of looking after him. And when he learnt that Burroughs was to accompany his chum he felt more at ease; he had great confidence in the steady, down-right Mole.
Reinhardt invited the boys to go up river in his motor-launch, a very powerful vessel in which he made his journeys between Shanghai and Sui-Fu. The launch had been bought out of the German navy as a condemned vessel; but some people remarked that if the Germans could afford to condemn vessels of this kind, their navy must be even more "tip-top" than was supposed. As the boys intended to take their hydroplane to their new quarters, they declined Reinhardt"s invitation, resolving to follow in the wake of the launch and test the relative speed of the two vessels.
The hydroplane was now by no means identical in appearance with the vessel that had roused a pa.s.sing curiosity at Plymouth. During the year they had been in China the boys had devoted all their spare time to turning it into a hydro-aeroplane. They replaced the original hull with a much lighter frame of canvas, fitting a kite-shaped half-keel under its forward part. They kept their engine, but adapted it to work two propellers, one at the stern, below the water-line, for driving the vessel through the water; the other raised some feet above the forepart, for driving it through the air. To the sides they fitted floats, and large planes, capable of being folded back when the vessel was to be used as a hydroplane, and adjustable at various angles. By means of differential gearing they contrived that the power of the water screw could be gradually reduced, while the air tractor gained in the same proportion. The effect of their arrangements was that as the speed in the water increased, the vessel rose a little; then, bringing into play an elevator and the tractor, they made the vessel rise completely out of the water and behave in all respects as an aeroplane.
The flying boat, as it came to be known in Shanghai, gave them at first as much trouble as it gave amus.e.m.e.nt to their friends. Their early experiments with the new model were exasperating. They found that they could rise above the water for a short distance, but then fell, not always gently, and sometimes with anything but pleasant consequences to themselves and the machine. More than once they had diverted the spectators on the bank by having to swim for it, and subsequently to fish up the machine from the bottom. They had never yet risked a flying experiment in deep water; but the good-humoured advice of their friends to let the boat remain a boat only made them the more determined to succeed.
The journey up the great "outside old river," as their Chinese servants called it, was full of interest to the young traders. At first so wide as to seem rather a sea than a river, six hundred miles from its mouth it was still nearly a mile wide, crowded with fine cargo steamers, and innumerable native junks, rafts, lorchas and cormorant boats, conveying the produce of the interior to the various treaty ports. They pa.s.sed large riverside villages teeming with an industrious population: then came into vast stretches of swamp choked with reed-beds, beyond which the country for miles presented an unbroken vista of forest, or of luxuriant crops. Here cl.u.s.tered a village almost at the edge of the stream, the quaint paG.o.da-like houses raised several feet above the level, behind stone or brick embankments, necessary in time of flood.
At another place the houses were perched on a cliff, nestling picturesquely among trees and shrubs. Between Ichang and Chung-king they entered a region of rock-strewn rapids, which, however, were now partly obscured by the summer floods. The river here swirled seaward at the rate of from seven to ten knots, forming dangerous whirlpools, and needing skilful navigation. Reinhardt had performed the journey many times, and his crew were familiar with every part of the course. The launch thrashed its way against the current, and the hydroplane had no difficulty in following in its wake, escaping the full force of the enormous volume of water by skimming the surface. In mere speed it was the superior craft.
Reinhardt had not been very well pleased when he learnt that Burroughs was to join his friend. He was too astute not to be aware that the boy disliked him; but he was also too astute to betray his consciousness of it, and his manner towards Burroughs was if anything even more conciliatory and gracious than to other people. On the day of their departure, when they met at the quayside, he greeted him with the effusiveness of an old friend; and after their arrival at Sui-Fu, seemed to lay himself out to please. But the more pleasant he was, the more distrustful Burroughs became; and the younger man was always annoyed with himself because he feared he only imperfectly concealed his real feelings.
Sui-Fu was a large city at the junction of the Min and the Chin-sha rivers, which unite to form the Yang-tse-kiang. It was a busy place, and contained a considerable European community, whose houses stood in wooded grounds on the river bank. After spending a few days in the English consul"s bungalow, the two friends started a little chummery near the river--a sitting-room, and a bedroom apiece, with a compound and outbuildings for their native servants. In addition to a cook and a man-of-all-work, they had each a personal servant. The two Chinamen soon cordially hated each other, as is the rule in such cases; but neither had any dislike for the other"s master. Lo San, Errington"s man, was just as attentive and respectful to Burroughs as his own man, Chin Tai. The Englishmen more than once had to intervene between the two Chinamen when they were fighting with their feet and nails, and they threatened at last to dismiss them both if they could not keep the peace. The threat was effective so far as it prevented fights and shrill abuse; but the masters would have been amused, perhaps, if they could have seen how the servants in their own quarters managed to express their hate without making a noise.
There was a difference between the positions of the two boys at Sui-Fu, inasmuch as Burroughs was nominally head of his branch, whereas Errington was only an a.s.sistant to Reinhardt. But it turned out that the German was very often absent, travelling inland in various directions. He appeared to have an extensive acquaintance among Chinese viceroys and other high officials, and had a very large personal correspondence, which apparently had no relationship to the business of his firm. The result was that a great deal of the routine work of the office was left to Errington, who in a short time had practically as much responsibility as Burroughs. The two branches were in a sense compet.i.tors--that is to say, they dealt in the same cla.s.s of goods, and bargained with the same merchants and dealers. But thanks to the personal relationship between the two Englishmen, their firms, so far as the branches at Sui-Fu were concerned, acted in concert, to their mutual benefit, because the Chinese merchants were unable to play one off against the other.
One day, after the conclusion of a certain transaction between Burroughs and a cotton-grower, Reinhardt remarked dryly to Errington that Ehrlich Sohne had lost a chance of making a considerable profit.
"I dare say," said Errington quickly, "but Burroughs and I must either work together, or definitely work against each other. If we are going to cut each other"s throats I"d better go back to Shanghai."
"Nonsense, my dear fellow: nozink farzer from my soughts. You do very well; only I am vexed to lose good business."
The matter dropped. Reinhardt found Errington too useful to be willing to quarrel with him. But a little later he let fall a hint that if Errington held his tongue, it would be possible to carry through certain business deals from time to time without Burroughs" knowledge. Vague as the hint was, it disgusted Errington, and he felt a dawning distrust of Reinhardt; but the German, quick to read him, laughed it off as a joke, saying that no one could suppose that Damon and Pythias could for a moment be separated. Errington did not mention these matters to his friend, from a reluctance to admit that Burroughs" opinion of Reinhardt was justified.
It was soon evident to them both that Reinhardt, however much he might be disliked by the community at Shanghai, enjoyed somewhat unusual privileges. His frequent absences were known to his princ.i.p.als, and he made many visits to Shanghai and Kiauchou--visits which Errington, who had good means of judging, knew were not connected with the business. A little light was thrown on the matter by Burroughs" comprador, who told his master one day that he had a brother whose brother-in-law kept an opium den at a small town a few miles up the river. Opium-smoking was forbidden in China, but, like gambling and lotteries and other prohibited things, it was winked at by the local mandarins in many parts of the country, in consideration of heavy bribes. Reinhardt"s launch was often seen anch.o.r.ed off the place, sometimes when he had gone there ostensibly to transact business with a cloth-dealer, at other times as a stage in his longer journeys. He had not the appearance of a victim of the opium habit, and Burroughs concluded that he gave way to occasional bouts, of which the effects were temporary.
CHAPTER IV
RIVER PIRATES