At last, almost exhausted, Dick reached the waterfront. Not for a moment did he pause. He rushed up a narrow strip of board that led to a Chinese junk. His breath was almost gone. His heart crashed against his ribs frightfully. At the dark doorway that led into the mystic interior of the ship he paused. The gloom of it was forbidding. It was creepy. Yet the howling mob, which was now dangerously near, was a far more definite menace. As he hesitated, something struck him a terrific blow on the shoulder and sent him headlong into the eery blackness.
3
For a few moments he lay in the darkness afraid to move. He was unhurt, for he had fallen scarcely a half-dozen feet. The interior of the junk was totally black. He did not know whether he was in a cabin or not. He knew nothing about the construction of a Chinese junk. He didn't suppose it amounted to much, or else it would have had a more flowery name. As his eyes grew accustomed co the gloom, he tried to see about him, but he could not. For all the good his eyes were to him in that velvet blackness he might have been blind. He had no idea who had struck him. It could not have been one of his pursuers, for they were far behind. He made no effort to rise. He was afraid that the least rustle of his body might make known his position to the hidden foe, who he was sure lurked in the velvet shadows. Once as he felt cautiously about him his hand encountered a cold damp hand, so bony and with such sharp nails it might have been the claw of some monstrous bird. He shrank back. Yet the hand pursued him. He heard no sound. The hand seemed bodiless, to be groping eerily around in the darkness, an unexplainable menace. He crouched back from it. It was foolish, but nevertheless he was in a condition bordering on panic. Now he was against the wall, but still the hand came on. With an effort he pulled himself together. He could retreat no farther. He put out his hands frantically and in the gloom he found and held a scrawny throat. He squeezed it as though his fingers were a vise. The thing struggled. It uttered a shriek. Dick's grip relaxed. The menace was human. Fear slipped from him. The Chinaman feared him as much as he had feared the groping claws.
Instantly a door opened and an old Chinaman carrying a lantern appeared, a golden-yellow lantern that looked as big as the moon. His face was yellower than the wine of Mr. Isaacs. He was dressed in a long coat of yellow and on his head was a fantastic contrivance which looked as though it might be a shade for the lantern. It could not by any stretch of the imagination have been called a hat. He came forward slowly, as though the years bore down heavily upon his shoulders, and yet there was a majestic air about him which was exceedingly impressive.
Before Dick Varney he stopped. "I am Wing Lo," he said in perfect English. "I have sailed the Yellow Sea for over sixty years. And only now in my advanced age am I molested."
Dick looked at the old fellow in amazement, then at the yellow-brown coolie who was dimly discernible not far off in the shadows, rubbing his scrawny throat with his claw-like fingers.
"It is not I who am the oppressor," he replied. "Until this moment I did not know of your existence. How then could I oppress you? I was held up at the point of a gun in a questionable resort far on the other side of the river. In the ensuing fight I was forced to smash the lamp so that I could escape. Almost half of
