There were too many of them, he knew well. He could only wait and watch and hope that circumstances would show the way out of this alarming tangle.
"Where are we?" Mark demanded, turning on Chun Lon.
"Oh, piecee up-river," the Chinese answered. "Velly big wind, big tide. No can sail, no can find Shanghai. Bad joss pidgin."
The river was as calm as glass, with no whiff of breeze on it, so the statement about the headwind Mark knew to be a lie. The other information he judged to be only too true. He fancied that it would indeed be a very long time before Shanghai could be found.
"We're nowhere near Shanghai," he said. "See here, if you'll get your lazy crew out and row for the Whangpoo as hard as you can, I'll give you fifty taels."
He made this proposition as though Chun Lon were any boat lowda and hitherto unknown to him. He also spoke of "rowing for the Whangpoo" as though it were around the corner.
The fifty taels did not seem to stir Chun Lon at all. The box containing four thousand times
