United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To reach the Sha-mien and particularly the Hotel Victoria one crossed a narrow canal, always choked with rocking sampans over and about which swarmed yellow men and women and children in varied shades of faded blue cotton. At sunset the swarming abruptly ceased; even the sampans appeared to draw closer together, with the quiet of water-fowl.
You'll be along next spring?" "If the old tub will float. I'll watch over these infants, if that's your worry. Good-bye." The doctor went down the side to the waiting sampan, which at once set out for the Sha-mien. Through a blur of tears Ruth followed the rocking light until it vanished. One more passer-by; and always would she remember his patience and tenderness and disinterestedness.
The silence of Canton at night was sinister, for none could prophesy what form of mob might suddenly boil out. No Cantonese was in those days permitted to cross to the Sha-mien after sunset without a license. To simplify matters, he carried a coloured paper lantern upon which his license number was painted in Arabic numerals.
He spoke English with astonishing facility and with a purity which often embarrassed his tourists. He made his headquarters at the Victoria on the Sha-mien, and generally met the Hong-Kong packet in the morning. You left Hong-Kong at night, by way of the Pearl River, and arrived in Canton the next morning.
There are a thousand questions I'd like to ask you, but I sha'n't ask them." "Ask them, all of them, and I will gladly answer. I mystify you; I can see that. Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with the mystery." "All right. I'll call for you this afternoon when Wu is on. I'll show you the Sha-mien; and we can talk all we want." "I was never going to tell anybody," she added.
He turned and shouted some orders to the Kanaka crew, then nodded to the sampan's coolies, who bore upon the sweeps and headed for the Sha-mien. Ah Cum turned to his own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had shifted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of three who were coming down the packet gang-plank.
Our old interpreter was much distressed at this, for, as far as I could judge, his countrymen gauged a vessel's fighting power solely by the amount of smoke that she emitted, and he feared that we should be regarded with but scanty respect. The British and French Consulate-Generals at Canton are situated on a large artificial island, known as Sha-mien.
There was scant social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings, little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer youngsters.
From the Sha-mien to the yacht, Spurlock had uttered no word; though, even in the semi-darkness, no gesture or word of Ruth's escaped him. Now that she was his, to make or mar, she presented an extraordinary fascination. She had suddenly become as the jewels of the Madonna, as the idol's eye, infinitely beyond his reach, sacred.
The Consul-General warned us that the smells in the native city would be unspeakably appalling, and advised us to smoke continuously, very kindly presenting each of us with a handful of mild Borneo cheroots. The canal separating Sha-mien from the city is 100 feet broad, but I doubt if anywhere else in the world 100 feet separates the centuries as that canal does.
Word Of The Day