Travelers
by houseboat on the Upper Yangtze should have some knowledge of
commissariat.
Getting away was a tedious business.
Later, the fellows pressed us to spend a good deal of time in the small,
dingy, ill-lighted apartment they are pleased to call their club; and
the skipper had to recommission his boat, get in provisions for the
voyage, engage his crew, pay off debts, and attend to a thousand and one
minute details--all to be done after the contract to carry the madcap
passengers had been signed and sealed, added to the more practical
triviality of three-fourths of the charge being paid down. And then our
captain, to add to the dilemma, vociferously yelled to us, in some
unknown jargon which got on our nerves terribly, that he was waiting for
a "lucky" day to raise anchor.
However, we did, as the reader will be able to imagine, eventually get
away, amid the firing of countless deafening crackers, after having
watched the sacrifice of a cock to the God of the River, with the
invocation that we might be kept in safety. Poling and rowing through a
maze of junks, our little floating caravan, with the two magnates on
board, and their picul of rice, their curry and their sugar, and
slenderest outfits, bowled along under plain sail, the fore-deck packed
with a motley team of somewhat dirty and ill-fed trackers, who whistled
and halloed the peculiar hallo of the Upper Yangtze for more wind.
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