Chapter III – The Pearl River
As the river narrowed, junks of all shapes and sizes were come upon. They are venerable-looking craft, with no little dignity about them. They move through the water with all the lofty pride of a company of village geese. Some were crowded with merchandise, and others with people. No matter what the cargo was, they had this common feature – they all carried cannon. The number of guns varied from two to eight, according to the size of the ship. They were very ancient weapons, such as are seen in the vestibule of a county town museum, or about the bandstand on a marine parade. Some were of brass, but most were baser metal. It is hard to say who would suffer the more from the firing of these pieces of ordnance – the gunner or the object fired at.
It is with some degree of emotion that the traveller learns that these guns are carried as a protection against pirates. More than that, he is told that the steam launches which ply between Canton and up-country villages are not only armed, but have often around them a netting of wire to prevent pirates from boarding their decks. This is, in fact, a pirates’ country, and the estuaries, creeks, and rivers of the coast have been pirates’ haunts.
If there be an English schoolboy on board he will be thrilled with delight. Since the age of five it has been the ambition of his life to be either an engine-driver or a pirate. He has played at pirates in the chalk caves at Margate, he has terrified his sister with a toy pistol and the most lurid homicidal threats. It has been upon the pirate, his ideal, that he has lavished the fondest hero worship, and when he has been lying ill in bed with chicken pox, stories of piracy and rapine read from a book by gentle lips have brought to him the utmost consolation and peace.
Such a lad will fancy strange things in the Pearl River. He sees sailing down upon the steamer a vessel with a dark hull and an indistinct pennon at her masthead: that flag must be black, and upon it there must be wrought in ghastly white a skull and crossbones. He sees ashore a bamboo tied to an upright rock; that is a pirates’ signal. It is either a guide to hidden treasure or a token to meet at night, in a certain cave, to plot the spoiling of a merchantman. He sees a riverside village with a great crowd of junks in the little harbour. These have fled here to escape the pirates. They are huddled together with fear, and none has the heart to put to sea.
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Click here to read about the Historical Background to
The Other Side of The Lantern.
