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He moved silently across the room and shut the window, barring out the fluttering yellow light, the sparkling silver of the stars, the orange of the fishing-boats, the murmured distance of the town. A few moments later Clare Trojan came in.
The strange river-life of China is all about us; small fishing-boats are everywhere plying their calling. They are constructed with a central chamber full of auger-holes for the free admittance of water, in which the fish are conveyed alive to market, or imprisoned during the owner's pleasure.
It seems practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common.
We are off once more and up the coast to Shanghai, the last Chinese port we touch before going over to Japan. Next morning we come up on deck to find a wet, clammy fog we might be back in England again how astonishing! Now and again appearing out of the folds of swathing mist we see little islands and gaily painted fishing-boats, the owners of which seem bent on committing suicide.
The fishing-boats and small schooners were dragged high up on the beach. The ice formed upon the bay that lay in the midst of the islands.
We had crossed the short expanse of sea, and passing a small lighthouse were entering a square harbor lined with fishing-boats. Stoutly built, solid fishing-boats they were, meant for stormy weather; and their metal pennons, which could never droop in deadest calm, flew bravely, all in the same direction, like flags in a company of lances in an old Froissart picture.
Directly under his eyes in the Avant Port the dim hulls of steamers and war-ships, fishing-boats and tugs, lay like monsters asleep. It did worse in that it inspired a longing for what he knew positively to be unattainable. It stirred a new impulse to fight for what he had definitely given up.
Of coming down into a harbour when the tide was at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float on, and glad women and children waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's clothes spread out to dry upon the shore; of busy sailors, and their voices high among ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of the water, and the universal sparkling.
We have no distinct account of any maritime engagements between one tribe and another carried on in their vessels of war; but as these belong to the state, if it may be so termed that is, as the war canoes are the property of a particular community inhabiting a village or district, as distinguished from the fishing-boats of individuals it is probable that their hostile encounters may occasionally be carried on upon the element with which a nation of islanders are generally familiar.
Mustering in the early light like a swarm of giant white-winged moths, the fishing-boats raced forth with the flowing tide, urged by sweep and sail and lusty sinews. Paying out their hundred-fathom nets, they drifted over the banks like flocks of resting sea-gulls, only to come ploughing back again deep laden with their spoils.
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