Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/185

 "Don't they give us anything to eat, I wonder?" Mark asked. "Perhaps Mr. Huen thought his dinner would last us for a while. I'm sure I could live for a week on it. Well, we might as well sit down and look at what's going on."

Shadowy shores slipped by. The boats were threading one of the innumerable mazy waterways that furnish the main routes of travel in this part of China. It was crowded with the dim shapes of sampans and small, squat junks. Twisting creeks joined it at intervals, and the vague land on either side seemed to bear a moving growth of masts and square sails. Little by little darkness drew down over the water, so that nothing could be seen but the near masses of boats that slid suddenly out of the dusk almost upon the craft where Mark and Alan sat silently. In the boat ahead people were burning their evening incense; the smoke of it drifted sharply in upon the boys. They saw strange little colored lamps lighted upon the high sterns of the other boats. Against the open end of the deck-house the small, square bulk of the treasure-box was outlined less and less distinctly.