Part 2 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV.
With the Priest of the G.o.d of the Golden Fish.
On the south side of the island of Hongkong are a number of small villages occupied by fishermen. Any one of these hidden away under the shade of the great bamboos may be taken as a type of all the others.
The little houses have roofs made of reeds and bundles of twigs, but these do not serve so well for protection from wind and weather as the thick foliage of the overhanging trees. On the beach fis.h.i.+ng nets are spread to dry; and in the calm waters of the little bay a number of poor old junks ride lazily at anchor. One of these is drawn up on the sh.o.r.e and the men are examining the haul of fish just brought in.
Women and children with baskets and buckets are hurrying down to the beach to do their part in the work of sorting. The large s.h.i.+ning blue fishes with bands of blue and rose-red and the yellow ones with spots of red and green they pack in small baskets between rows of green leaves. The lobsters, always plentiful, they place in baskets having compartments so that they cannot get at each other and mangle their bodies fighting; the oysters they throw into a large common bucket, keeping out the small and inferior ones to carry to their huts to use for food. Whenever wind and weather permit the men go off on fis.h.i.+ng expeditions, and this is the usual scene which attends their home coming. Then, according to whether the haul has been a good or a poor one, Lihoa, the oldest man in the village, says: ”We will take to the G.o.d of the Sea who rides on the Golden Fish a thank offering,” or ”The G.o.d who rides on the Golden Fish is angry with us; we must pacify him with strips of gold-paper.” And, regularly on an appointed day, the old man goes up to the cell of the priest carrying the thank- or the sin-offering, as the case may be, to the G.o.d with the dreadful goggle eyes who rides a gilded sea-monster.
On the day on which the crosses had been erected on the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour Lihoa and his people had had a miserably small catch of fish.
”My children,” cried Lihoa, ”what crime against the G.o.d of the Golden Fish have you committed? So small a haul as this we have not had for a year and a day. The New Year is at hand. How can we have our usual celebration with only a sapeck or two in our pockets?”
”How shall we celebrate the New Year?” cried one. ”How shall we appease the G.o.d?” wailed others mournfully.
An old Chinaman, whose wrinkled face looked like parchment cried out:
”Why do you even ask the cause of our bad luck? Do you not know why it has come upon us? Were not those white-faced women here again yesterday whose G.o.d is the enemy of our G.o.d? Again they have carried off bur babies to the great white house in Hongkong. Why do not the people kill the superfluous children according to the old custom of the land? Why let living children get into the hands of these foreign women to be murdered and to have their eyes and hearts stewed up into magic drinks? The G.o.d of the Golden Fish is angry with us. Not another good haul shall we have; and what is more we shall be swallowed up in the sea, if we allow any more children to be taken to the house of the foreign G.o.d.”
”Be still, be still, old Loha,” answered Lihoa. ”You don't know what you are taking about. I myself have been to the great white house of the foreign women in Hongkong. There they do naught but good, and n.o.body ever hears of your doing anything good from morning till night.
Our children are better taken care of there than here in our poor old huts. If our women only loved their babes as much as these white-faced women do! Be still. Your drivelling talk about stewing up their eyes and hearts to make drinks is all a foolish lie. Did we not open one of the graves of one of the children to see if the eyes and hearts were there? And they were. A nephew of mine, the son of my sister Luli, who was exposed twelve years ago by his mother, because her husband was drowned and she had no means of bringing him up, was taken to the great house and now he is a splendid big boy. From there they sent him to the school, and he can speak and write the Chinese language and also that of the West. Some day I shall go and get him and bring him back to live with our family.--Ah! here we stand and gossip like old women, while the sun is sinking. It is time to take the fish and the oysters to the market. Whose turn is it to go?”
Four men stepped forward and raised the wooden yoke having attached to it buckets of oysters and baskets of fish. The sack containing the crabs Lihoa himself swung over his shoulder, and they started at a quick pace up the hill over which the path to Victoria lay. The women as they turned to go with the children to the huts to prepare the evening meal bade them farewell and called out, ”A fortunate sale!”
Night settled down quickly, for in a tropical climate the twilight does not last so long as with us. In Hongkong the sun hardly sets before it is dark, and this evening as the moon, almost at the full, stood high in the heavens, Lihoa had no occasion to light the little lantern which he carried with him. He found the footpath leading up the hill without difficulty, and his people followed after him goose-fas.h.i.+on in single file. Almost at the top they came to the cell in the rock occupied by the priest of the G.o.d of the Golden Fish, and in the moonlight to their astonishment saw in the broad open s.p.a.ce in front of it a group of men from the neighboring villages. At a signal from Lihoa the carriers placed their burden upon the ground and all went forward to see what the gathering meant.
”Have you heard nothing, Lihoa, of the great scheme which is on foot?”
asked the leader of the most important of the villages on the north coast of Hongkong. ”Has not the recruiting officer of the rich Natse been to your village?--Oh, it is so small and hidden away that he does not deem it worth his while to go to you, and then, besides, the three hundred who are wanted have announced their intention to go, for who would remain here and tiresomely drag out existence with the n.i.g.g.ardly sums to be made from fis.h.i.+ng when elsewhere the gold lies in such heaps that one can pick up whole bags full in a few days?”
”How? What? For heaven's sake!--sacks full of gold in a few days?”
cried Lihoa, who, like all Chinamen, was covetous of great wealth.
”Speak, Lohe, tell us, can we get some of the gold,--at least a handful or two? It is just as you say, our village is the last and the very least in the world, and not a soul has come to us with the good news.
Tell us the road to fortune.”
The agent Lohe, who for each able-bodied Chinaman whom he secured, received a hundred sapecks, agreed to tell Lihoa the road for the reason that he was ”his cousin and was glad to do him a little service”. He pictured to him a land, bearing the barbaric name Australia, which the ”devils from the West” had discovered many days'
journey away beyond the islands to the south, where the gold lay in the fields like the stones on the island of Hongkong, and where great nuggets, as large as a man's head, were to be had. This Goldland ”the devils from the West” wanted for themselves, but the priest of the G.o.d, in whose cell he had just been, said that this gold could be taken away only by the sons of the Celestial Kingdom, that the treasures of this land belonged to the Chinese, and not to the barbarians of the West.
The sly discoverers of the Goldland had come to get the Chinese to bring these lumps of gold to their s.h.i.+ps, where the men from the West and the sons of the Celestial Kingdom would divide the spoils. The rich Natse was out in search of three hundred men to bring this gold from the distant land to the south. Of course, each one of the three hundred fortunate enough to go would receive his own weight in gold, and for him and his entire family there would be a life of wealth and honor on his return home.
Thus Lohe explained the situation.
”More than a hundred pounds of gold, and wealth and honor,” repeated Lihoa, on whom the story of the gold which the G.o.d had said was to be given to the Chinese and not to the hated barbarians from the West, had made a deep impression.
”Have you heard it, my people? We can all become as rich as rich Natse, and even richer, if we go on the s.h.i.+p to the southland.”
”Yes”, said one of the oyster carriers, ”if all that is true--”