Stolen Idols. E. Phillips Oppenheim

      “I am Wu Ling, the peaceful trader,” the other answered. “I bring prosperity to those whom you seek to rob.”

      Wu Abst spat into the river.

      “I know of you,” he growled. “You trade with foreign money. You take the jade and the gems, the silk and the handiwork of these people and sell them rubbish.”

      “Where I take,” the other rejoined, “I give something in return, which is more than you do.”

      “What is your business with me?” Wu Abst demanded, glancing sullenly at the two Maxim guns trained upon him, behind each of which was seated, cross-legged, a brawny and capable-looking Chinese sailor.

      “Last night,” Wu Ling announced, “I traded at the village of Hyest, and I heard a strange tale. I heard that you had on board your ship a foreigner tied with ropes, and that you were waiting to reach your own stretches to throw him to the crocodiles. Is this the truth, Wu Abst, or am I to search your ship?”

      “It is the truth,” the other admitted grimly. “He is a foreign devil who merits death and even torture. He is a thief and a sacrilegious pest upon the earth.”

      “You speak hard words of him,” Wu Ling observed.

      “What words other than hard can be spoken of such?” Wu Abst retorted. “Presently I shall tell you of his deeds. I like not your speech, Wu Ling. You speak our tongue but speak it strangely. There are rumours of you in many places. There are some who say that not only is the money with which you trade the money of foreign devils, but that you, too, are one of them in spirit if not by birth.”

      “What I am is none of the present business,” Wu Ling declared. “What of this prisoner of yours?”

      “I shall speak of him now,” Wu Abst answered. “Then, if you are indeed a man of this country, you shall see that I do no evil thing in casting him to the crocodiles. He was caught, a thief in the sacred temple of the sacred village of Nilkaya, in the temple where the Great Emperor himself was used to worship. The priests who caught him tied his body with ropes—not I. They brought him to the riverside, and they gave me silver to deal with him.”

      “Your story is true,” Wu Ling admitted. “The circumstances you relate are known to me. But there were two of these robbers. What of the other, his companion?”

      “The priests say that he escaped, and with him the two sacred Images of the great God, reverenced for nine hundred years,” the pirate confided. “It is because of the escape of the other that they wish to make sure of the death of this one.”

      Wu Ling considered for a moment.

      “Wu Abst,” he pronounced at last, “you have told me a true story, and you have acted in this matter as a just man. Therefore these guns of mine shall bring no message of evil to you, nor shall I declare war, so long as you keep to your side of the river and above the villages where I trade. But as for the foreign devil, you must hand him over to me.”

      Wu Abst raised his hands to heaven. For a time his speech was almost incomprehensible. He was stricken with a fit of anger. He shouted and pleaded until he foamed at the mouth. Wu Ling listened unmoved. When at last there was silence he spoke.

      “It is clear to me what you intended, Wu Abst,” he said. “There was to be torture and more silver from the priests before you cast this prisoner to the sea fish.”

      “It is a hard living that one makes nowadays,” Wu Abst, the Terror of the River, muttered.

      “Nevertheless in this matter I am firm,” the other insisted. “Hand me over the foreigner and go your way. You know of me. I travel into dangerous places when I leave my ship, and I have a score of men below who could hew their way through a regiment of your cutthroats, and a gun in the bows there which would send you to the bottom with a single discharge. I am your master, Wu Abst, and I command. Bring me the foreigner and go your way.”

      So, a few minutes later, a half-naked, barely conscious, young Englishman, the remains of his garments rags upon his back, blue in the face from lack of circulation, a hideous and pitiful sight, was carried up from the hold of Wu Abst’s sailing dhow and laid upon the deck of the trading schooner of Wu Ling. His cords were cut, brandy and water were poured down his throat, a sail reared as a shelter from the sun, whilst from a small hose, cool, refreshing water was sprayed over him until consciousness returned and speech began to stammer from his lips. Then, from the petrol engine, commenced once more the noise which had brought consternation to Wu Abst. The ship swung round in a circle and passed on its way down the river. Wu Abst, with a little shrug of the shoulders, relit his pipe. Perhaps, after all, there would have been no more silver!

      That evening seemed to the released man like a foretaste of paradise. He lay on a couch in Wu Ling’s cabin, with the roof and sides rolled back and nothing but a cunning arrangement of mosquito netting between him and the violet twilight. Above was the moon and the brilliantly starlit night; on either side occasional groves of trees—trees growing almost down to the river’s edge, some with poisonous odours, others almost sickly sweet. Sometimes there was a light from a distant village, but more often they were enveloped in a thick, velvety darkness. And they were pointing for the great port at the mouth of the river, and safety. The released man was sipping brandy and water, and smoking. His host sat opposite him, grave and enigmatic.

      “I talk English little,” Wu Ling said, “but I understand all. Speak your story, and tell how called.”

      The young man raised himself slightly.

      “My name is Gregory Ballaston,” he announced. “I am an Englishman, as you know, a traveller and fond of adventure. For years this story of the temple of Nilkaya has been in my brain. I heard all about it from some one who lived in Pekin for many years.”

      “The story?” Wu Ling enquired politely.

      “In this temple,” the young man narrated, “is a great statue of a Chinese god—Buddha, I suppose—and on either side of it are two smaller ones made from hard wood, marvellously carved, and, some say, a thousand years old. Each is supposed to be a counterpart of the greater God, and yet they demonstrate an amazingly presented allegory. They bear a likeness to one another, they bear a likeness to the God himself, but each is curiously different. In one you seem to trace the whole of the evil qualities which could ever enter into the character of man, and in the other, all the good qualities. One is hideous and the other beautiful. Yet, if you put them side by side and glance quickly from one to the other, the two seem to grow together so that the impression of the Image which is left in your mind is that of the great God above. They are called the Body and the Soul.”

      “This story I have heard,” Wu Ling admitted.

      “I have heard it many times, but I scarcely believed it—until I saw,” the young man continued. “I had only a few minutes in the temple and there was danger all around, yet for a moment they took my breath away. I could scarcely move. Why, the man who fashioned them might have been an oriental Phidias.”

      “Proceed,” Wu Ling begged.

      “Well, the point of the story is this. Generations ago there was a great rising amongst the people, an invasion from the north, and robbers seem to have overrun the whole place. They sacked even the temples, and the priests—those who had warning of their coming—stripped their robes and their temples of all the precious stones which they possessed, and hid them.”

      “Hid them,” Wu Ling repeated. “Ah!”

      “Some of this story, you have, of course, heard,” the young man went on, “because your trade brings you, I suppose, within a hundred miles of Nilkaya. The temples were rich in jewels—the emperors of China had sent them gifts for centuries—and the legend is that all the most valuable were concealed within these two Images—the Body and the Soul.”

      “That,” Wu Ling commented, “is a strange story.”

      “As I told you,” the young man continued, “I heard it from one who lived in Pekin and I believe