Victoria City on Hongkong Island was almost invisible in hot mist and rain as the steamer crawled up the roads and anchored off the sea-wall. The gray harbour water appeared to steam, slopping sluggishly1 against her iron sides, and the rain steamed as it fell, so that the heavy air was a sort of stew2 of wet and heat and strange smells of the sea and land. The Lascar and coolie deck-hands were hurrying out the side-ladder, the water streaming from their faces and their coarse black hair; but, above the rattle3 and bustle4 of disembarkation, Elliott was aware of the movement of a mighty5 life clustered invisibly around him. The hum and roar of an immense city pierced the fog to landward; on the other side he was conscious of the presence of innumerable shipping6. The noises came hollowly through the hot air, echoed from the sides of giant vessels7; he caught hazy9 glimpses of towering forests of yards, and of wet, black funnels10. The air was acrid11 with the smoke of coal, and the water splashed incessantly12 upon the sea-wall from the swift passage of throbbing13 steam launches. Away in the mist there was a rapid fusilade of fire-crackers, and somewhere, apparently14 from the clouds above the city, a gun was fired, reverberating15 through the mist. A ship’s bell was struck near by, and, before the strokes had ceased, it was taken up by another vessel8, and another, and the sound spread through the haze16, near and far, tinkling17 in every key:
“Ting, ting; ting, ting; ting!” It was half-past five o’clock in the afternoon.
The rain slackened, and a fresh breeze split the mist. To landward Elliott beheld18 a wet, white city climbing irregularly up the sides of a long serrated mountain. The waterfront along the sea-wall swarmed19 with traffic, with rickshaws, sedan-chairs, carts, trucks, gay umbrellas, coolies, Lascars, Chinese, Indians, Japanese. The port was crowded with shipping, from war-steamers to high-sterned junks, as motley as the throng20 ashore21, and it was shot through incessantly with darting22 tugs23 and launches, so that in its activity it reminded him more of New York bay than of any other roadstead he had ever seen.
During the voyage from Bombay he had perforce picked up a smattering of that queer “pidgin-English” so apparently loose and so really organized a language, and when he stepped upon the Praya he beckoned24 authoritatively25 to a passing palanquin.
“Boy! You savvy26 number one good hotel?”
“Yes, master. Gleat Eastel’ Hotel b’long number one good.”
“Great Eastern Hotel, then—chop-chop,” Elliott acquiesced27, getting into the chair, and the coolies set off as he had directed, chop-chop, that is, with speed. They scurried28 across the Praya, up a narrow cross street, and came out upon Queen’s Road. They passed the Club and the post-office and finally set him down at the hotel, which, in spite of its great size and elaborate cooling devices, he found intolerably hot and damp. It rained all that evening, till his clothing hung limply upon him even in the billiard-room of the hotel, and when he went to his chamber29 he found the sheets apparently sodden30, and damp stood shining on the walls. Even in the steamy passage through the Malay Archipelago Elliott had spent no such uncomfortable night as that first one in Victoria at the commencement of the rainy season.
A torrential rain was pouring down when he awoke, after having spent most of the night in listening to the scampering31 of the cockroaches32 about his room. It was a hot rain, and there was no morning freshness in the air. The room was as damp as if the roof had been leaking, but he began to realize that this was to be expected and endured in Victoria for the next three months, and, shuddering33 damply, he resolved that he would hunt down his man within a week, if “Baker34” were still upon the island.
By the time he had finished a very English breakfast, for which he had no appetite, the rain had ceased, leaving the air even hotter than before. The sun shone dimly from a watery35 sky. Elliott felt oppressed with an aching languor36, but he was deeply anxious to finish his work and get away, so he went out upon the hot streets.
This time he would not repeat the mistakes of Bombay, and he wasted no time in adventures about the harbour. He called a sedan-chair and, having ascertained37 the names of the leading hotels of the city, he proceeded to investigate them one by one.
This search resulted in nothing but disappointment. There was no record of the man he sought at any hotel, neither at the expensive ones nor at the second and third class houses to which he presently descended38. The mate might indeed have changed his name again on landing, though Elliott could think of no reason why he should do so. At the Eastern Navigation Company’s offices he ascertained that “Baker” had indeed landed at Victoria from the Prince of Burmah, but nothing was known of his present whereabouts.
Finally Elliott called upon the American consul39, who could give him no help. He had never heard of the Clara McClay or her mate, but he turned out to be a Marylander, and he took Elliott to dinner with him, and made him free of the magnificent Hongkong Club, which is the envy of all the foreign settlements on the Eastern seas.
Under the sweeping40 punkahs in the vast, dusky rooms of the Club a temperature was maintained more approaching to coolness than Elliott had yet found in Victoria, and he lounged there for most of the evening, observing that a great part of the male white population of the city seemed to do likewise. It had come on to rain again, and the shuffle41 of bare feet in the streets mingled42 with the dismal43 swish of the downpour. He had been in Victoria for twenty-four hours, but he found himself bitterly weary already and oppressed with a certainty of failure.
Failure was indeed his lot during the next two weeks, though by an examination of the shipping-lists he assured himself that Baker had not sailed from Hongkong in the last two months, at least, not by any of the regular passenger steamers. It was out of all probability that he should have gone into the interior of China, and beyond possibility that he should have organized his wrecking44 expedition at so distant a port. Yet it was almost equally beyond the limits of likelihood that he should have come to Hongkong at all; and it was so beyond the bounds of sanity45 that he should voluntarily stay there during the rains that Elliott was forced to recognize that reason afforded no clue to the man’s movements.
To search for a stray straw in a haystack is trying to the temper, especially when the search must be conducted under the conditions of a vapour bath. But Elliott sweltered and toiled46 with a determination that certainly deserved more success than he attained47. He acquired much knowledge that was new to him in that fortnight. He learned the names and flavours of many strange and cooling drinks; he learned to call a chair or a rickshaw when he had to go twenty yards; to hang his clothes in an airtight safe overnight to save them from the cockroaches; to scrape the nocturnal accumulation of mould from his shoes in the morning, and to look inside them for centipedes before he put them on. He learned to keep matches and writing-paper in glass jars, to forget that there was such a thing as stiff linen48, and to call it a dry day if the rain occasionally slackened. But he learned nothing of what he was most anxious to discover. He could find no trace of either Baker or Burke at the hotels, at the consulates49, at the Club, or along the waterfront, and no man in Victoria admitted to having ever heard of the Clara McClay.
From time to time he went up to the Peak, behind the city, to gain refreshment50 in that social and physical altitude. A house there cost fifty guineas a month, but every one had it who pretended to comfort or distinction. It was damp even on the Peak, but it was cool; Hongkong Bay and Victoria lay almost perpendicularly51 below, veiled by a steamy haze, but on the summit fresh breezes played among the China pines, and Elliott always took the tramcar down the zigzag52 road again with fresh courage for an adventure that was daily growing more intolerably unadventurous.
The same desire for coolness at any cost led him to take the coasting-boat for Macao on the second Saturday of his stay. He had heard much already of the dead Portuguese53 colony, the Monte Carlo of the China coast, maintaining its wretched life by the lottery54, the fan-tan houses, and the perpetual issue of new series of postage stamps for the beguilement55 of collectors. But Macao is cooler than Hongkong, and those who cannot afford to live on the Peak find it a convenient place for the weekend, much to the benefit of the gaming-tables.
This being a Saturday, the boat was crowded with Victoria business men, who looked forward to a relief from the heat and the strain of the week in the groves56 and the fan-tan saloons of Macao. The relief began almost as soon as the roadstead was cleared, and a fresher breeze blew from a clearer sky, a cool east wind that came from green Japan. Elliott inhaled57 it with delight; it was almost as good as the Peak.
The verdant58 crescent of Macao Bay came in sight after a couple of hours’ steaming. At either tip of the curve stood a tiny and dilapidated block-house flying the Portuguese banner, and between them, along the water’s edge, ran a magnificent boulevard shaded by stately banyan-trees. The whole town appeared embowered in foliage59; the white houses glimmered60 from among green boughs61, and behind the town rose deeply wooded hills. Scarcely an idler sauntered on the Praya; a couple of junks slept at the decaying wharves62, and deep silence brooded over the whole shore.
“Beautiful!” ejaculated Elliott, unconsciously, overjoyed at the sight of a place that looked as if it knew neither business nor rain nor heat.
“Beautiful enough—but dead and accursed,” replied a man who had been reading in a deck-chair beside him.
“It looks dead, I must say,” Elliott admitted, glancing again at the deserted63 wharves.
The other man stood up, slipping a magazine into his pocket. He was gray-haired, tall, and very thin, with a face of reposeful65 benignity66. The magazine, Elliott observed, was the Religious Outlook, of San Francisco.
“An American missionary67,” he thought; and his heart warmed at the sight of a fellow countryman.
“I suppose it is pretty bad,” he said, aloud. “The more reason for men of your cloth to come over here.”
The old man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gently shook his head with a smile.
“I’m not a missionary, as you seem to think. At least, I ain’t any more of a missionary than I reckon every man ought to be who tries to live as he should. I’m just a tired-out Hongkong bookkeeper.”
“You’re an American, anyway.”
“You are too, ain’t you?”
“Certainly I am,” Elliott proclaimed. “And you—”
The little steamer rammed68 the wharf69 with a thump70 that set everything jingling71 on board. The gangplank was run out; the old man dived into the cabin in evident search for something or some one, and Elliott lost sight of him, and went ashore.
Macao slumbered72 in profound serenity73. As soon as the excursionists had scattered74, the Praya Grande was deserted. The great white houses seemed asleep or dead behind their close green shutters75 and wrought76 iron lattices that reminded Elliott of the Mexican southwest. But the air was clear and fresh, and it was possible to walk about without being drenched77 with perspiration78. Elliott strolled, lounged on the benches in the deserted park, visited the monument to Camoens above the bay, and finally ate a supper at the only decent hotel in the place, and enjoyed it thoroughly79 because it contained neither English nor Chinese dishes.
In the evening there was a little more animation80. There were strollers about the streets like himself; the band played in the park, and through the iron-barred windows he caught occasional mysterious glimpses of dark and seductive eyes under shadowy lashes81. As he sauntered past the blank front of a great stone house that in the days of Macao’s greatness had possibly been the home of a prince, he was stopped by a silk-clad coolie who lounged beside the wide, arched entrance.
“Chin-chin master. You wantchee makee one piecey fan-tan pidgin?”
Elliott had no idea of playing, but he had no objection to watching a little “fan-tan pidgin,” and he allowed the Celestial82 “capper” to introduce him through the iron gate that barred the archway. The arch was as long as a tunnel, leading to the square patio83 at the heart of the house, and here the scene was sufficiently84 curious.
Here the fan-tan tables were set, completely hidden from Elliott’s view by the packed mass of men that stood above them. Over each table burned a ring of gas-jets; far above them the stars shone clear in the blue sky beyond the roofless court. Round t............