The small gang followed the pair of foreigners the rest of the day from village to village, doing their best to stir up trouble. They succeeded in making the visits tense and unpleasant.
When they returned in the evening to the site of their landing, Coombs had hoped to end the day with the same sense of success with which it had begun. But the five or six troublemakers turned up there also, and serious trouble was only averted when the town council stepped in and kicked out the whole lot—Coombs and Robbie included.
Dejected and downcast, Coombs silently led the way back to the junk. Robbie attempted to cheer him with a few amusing sea stories, but to no avail, and by the time they had fallen asleep on the hard mats in the boat’s tiny cabin, Robbie was nearly as dispirited as his companion.
They awoke suddenly just before dawn to the sound of a driving rain against the cabin’s thin walls. A puddle had formed at Robbie’s feet. He hardly knew whether to laugh or cry at the ridiculousness of their circumstances. But the rain only added to Coombs’ morose mood.
“At least it will keep those troublemakers away,” said Robbie, trying to look on the bright side.
Coombs, however, found it hard to muster up much thankfulness after a night in a damp bed, with rain dripping through in several places, and nothing to look forward to but a cold and cheerless breakfast. Robbie thought fleetingly of the fine new roof at the hospital, and sighed at the irony of being trapped in such straits during the first real rain since his arrival, when they could have been warm and dry back at the mission. He found himself thinking that this was even worse than his being stranded in the sea, where at least he was completely wet and completely cold, not teased with occasional hints of dryness and warmth.
Shortly before noon the rain mercifully stopped, and the whole land was soon bathed once more in warmth. Quickly cheered, as was his nature, Robbie was quite willing to forget the setbacks of the previous day. Whistling, he set about getting the junk ready to cast off.
The sunshine did little to lift Coombs’ spirits. It became all the worse when he went back into the cabin to have a few moments of prayer alone, and there fell asleep. He was embarrassed and flustered when Robbie had to wake him to tell him they were ready to cast off.
“What direction?” Robbie asked as he loosened the rope from its mooring.
“Up river,” answered Coombs, determined but hardly enthusiastic.
What was left of the day they spent visiting another cluster of six villages with varying degrees of success. At least the young ruffians had not seen fit to dog their activities and they were not bothered again on that front all day.
They spent a passable night on the junk, but by morning were both quite ready to embark for home. They had retraced their steps but three or four miles downstream when the rain began once again, this time accompanied by what appeared to be growing winds and rougher water. Such a little squall would have been nothing for the kind of ships Robbie was accustomed to. But for a shallow-hulled junk made of lightweight wood, every extra bit of turbulence tossed them around and made maneuverability difficult. Coombs halfheartedly suggested docking, but they were both too anxious to get back to the mission to give up easily, and Robbie was confident they could make it.
However, several miles from the first village at which they had stopped, the canal spilled into a river down which they had to travel half a mile before veering off into another much smaller stream. Already swollen from the two days of rain, the river was moving much too swiftly for their safety, and a cross-wind struck them the moment its current caught the small junk.
Unprepared for the rapid change of direction, Robbie had the sail in exactly the wrong position for the sudden alteration of the wind, now coming in strong gusts. The junk swept down a trough of water, then up the other side, its bow extending out of the water just as a fierce blast of wind caught the sail that Robbie was frantically trying to haul around to the right direction. Without warning, both Robbie and Coombs were thrown into the frenzied current. When Robbie’s head surfaced, all he could see was the capsized old junk being carried out of reach toward the rocky shore. In minutes she washed to pieces. Coombs surfaced about ten feet away and they swam to the near shore and dragged themselves out. Nothing was said for a moment or two; then Robbie began to chuckle. A good old-fashioned Taggart laugh followed, which even succeeded in bringing a smile to the face of Coombs.
“Well, at least the rain won’t bother us anymore!” laughed Robbie. “Come on, Coombs. Let’s be off!” he said, rising, and extending his hand to his young companion. “I hope you know where we are and which way to go!”
They walked for about an hour, crossed the river by bridge, struck out down the smaller stream, and then set about trying to hail one of the few junks brave enough to be passing in such weather. They had no success, and thus continued to walk, hoping eventually to catch a ride on some river conveyance. The rain stopped in another thirty minutes, and suddenly Coombs spotted a large junk, a two-masted craft, as it appeared around the far bend in the stream.
“It looks like the mail packet,” he said with rising hope. “It’ll put in at the next village. If we can beat it there, maybe they’ll take us on.”
They began to run, their soaking clothes and shoes inhibiting them, and raced the two miles to the village, making it, footsore and exhausted, well ahead of the packet. But just as they reached the first of the outlying huts, from behind one of them stepped several young men in their late teens and blocked their path.
“Shih shen-mo?” asked Coombs in a tight voice when the ringleader stepped forward in the pathway.
Robbie could not understand a word of the brief conversation, but he recognized the hoodlums from two days earlier and could easily discern from their angry tone that they meant the two Westerners no good.
“T’a hen ch’un!” called the leader back to his companion, and they all roared with laughter. They approached, confident and cocky, outnumbering the strangers five to two.
“Please,” pleaded Coombs in Chinese, “we wish no trouble. Let us pass.”
“You make trouble everywhere, foreign pig!” spat the leader, and in the next instant all his followers spat at Coombs.
Coombs jumped back, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and tried in vain to wipe his face in the midst of the continued mocking laughter of the Chinese youths.
“Please, let us pass,” tried Coombs again, his voice taking on a note of desperation as he saw the mail packet pulling up to the dock less than a hundred and fifty yards farther down the path. “We must get to the packet.” Such an admission was a mistake if he hoped for any mercy.
“They do not carry foreign devils!”
Coombs was determined, however, and did not want to miss their only chance of a ride back to the mission. The day had already been one of the worst he had faced since coming to China and he was not willing to give in to another setback. He took a firm step forward and attempted to step between the leader of the small gang and one of his companions. But they laid their hands on his shirt and shoved him rudely away. He stumbled backwards, falling into the muddy path.
“Ha, ha! Wai-chu!” mocked several of the rowdies.
Robbie had understood nothing of what he had heard to that point, but now he had seen enough. He knew Coombs would continue to take such abuse without fighting back, just as Chang had been expected to do when attacked by his neighbors. But Robbie Taggart didn’t have to take anything. His reserve of self-control had already been taxed to its limit with the previous encounters with these miscreants. Now they had crossed the line and would have to answer to him!
He took two quick strides toward the leader, who still stood in the center of the group, grabbed his shirt before he had the chance to react and threw him mercilessly back into his companions.
“See how tough you are, you little cur, with someone who’ll fight back!” shouted Robbie.
With the help of his friends, the antagonist was back on his feet in an instant, and leaped bodily toward Robbie. But he was soon to learn, even with the help of all four of his friends, that this was no meek and mild missionary they were tangling with. Robbie knew how to handle himself in a street brawl as well as he could handle a ship—whether five to one or ten to one. He blocked the first attack but was immediately jumped upon from behind. A sharp backward thrust of his elbow slowed this attack, and Robbie was able to jump free in time to spin around just as the next was upon him. With his hands free, however, this new assailant was the next instant on the ground unconscious, the imprint of Robbie’s fist on his jaw.
Robbie spun around again to see the ringleader back on his feet, a look of hatred in his eyes. He came toward Robbie screaming, leaped into the air, and attempted to jab Robbie’s midsection with a punishing kick. Robbie deftly stepped to one side, grabbed the outstretched leg in midair, gave it a sharp twist, and sent the attacker sprawling to the ground on his back. From the corner of his eye Robbie saw that he was no longer alone in the fight. Coombs had joined in prying one of the Chinese youths from Robbie’s neck, giving him a smashing blow to the midsection. Though Coombs had never been in a fight before in his life, his instincts served him well.
If the Chinese hoodlums had originally thought that sheer numbers would protect them, they had never taken on either Robbie Taggart or a powerfully built young missionary who had been rained on, heckled, and shipwrecked to his limit. After another two minutes, four young Chinese troublemakers lay on the ground, and the fifth was running as fast as he could toward the village, wanting nothing more to do with these wild barbarians.
“Very good, Coombs!” exclaimed Robbie. “You handle yourself very well in a fight. Thank you for saving my hide!”
Coombs collapsed on the ground, and Robbie walked over to him, gave him a slap on the back, laughed and sat down beside him. “I haven’t had so much fun since my first day on the Sea Tiger!” said Robbie. “Where’d you ever learn to use your fists like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Coombs, smiling. “To tell you the truth, it’s the first time I’ve ever found them necessary.”
“Well, remind me to have you on my side the next time!” laughed Robbie. “What do you say we still try to make that junk?”
Coombs jumped to his feet. He had almost forgotten. He looked up and saw the boat was still there. The two were soon running toward it as quickly as their bruised, tired, and sore legs would carry them. Even as he went, however, Coombs’ exultation over their victory faded as the full implications of what he had done began to dawn on him. Though their journey was shortened considerably by the decision of the reluctant captain of the mail packet to sell them passage back to Wukiang, and though Robbie remained in boisterously high spirits, Coombs said hardly another word throughout the remainder of the day.
It was after sunset when the two travelers crossed the bridge and walked with limping gait into the mission compound. Though they had attempted to wash from their faces the more obvious evidence of their row with the young Chinese gang, their bruises, a couple of black eyes, and their torn clothing could not be hidden.
Predictably, the first person they met was Isaiah Wallace.