Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/95

 said. "I was up country when your note came, and that's why you're thinking I'm rude. I'm afraid you've had an awfully dull time of it. You see, there was a big flight of snipe, and I simply had to go after them. Come ashore now, and we'll do some lunch." The whistles suddenly stopped, and the man's voice rang like a trumpet in the abrupt stillness. Wareing laughed.

"All right," he called. "Good for you! Shall I jump, or will you come alongside?"

The man in the launch laughed, and gave an order. The launch churned water aft, and sidled in to the Rohilla.

"So that's a magnate out for pleasure," mused the man in the launch. "Wareing of Pennsylvania—the Grand Mogul of Pennsylvania. He looks like a ghost getting over jungle fever."

"So that's the man who went through from Canton to Su-Chow, and knows about the coal-fields of Shen-se," said Wareing of Pennsylvania, as he came over the side.