The flying boat, as it came to be known in Shanghai, gave them at first as much trouble as it gave amusement to their friends. Their early experiments with the new model were exasperating. They found that they could rise above the water for a short distance, but then fell, not always gently, and sometimes with anything but pleasant consequences to themselves and the machine. More than once they had diverted the spectators on the bank by having to swim for it, and subsequently to fish up the machine from the bottom. They had never yet risked a flying experiment in deep water; but the good-humoured advice of their friends to let the boat remain a boat only made them the more determined to succeed. The journey up the great "outside old river," as their Chinese servants called it, was full of interest to the young traders. At first so wide as to seem rather a sea than a river, six hundred miles from its mouth it was still nearly a mile wide, crowded with fine cargo steamers, and innumerable native junks, rafts, lorchas and cormorant boats, conveying the produce of the interior to the various treaty ports. They passed large riverside villages teeming with an industrious population: then came into vast stretches of swamp choked with reed-beds, beyond which the country for miles presented an unbroken vista of forest, or of luxuriant crops. Here clustered a village almost at the edge of the stream, the quaint pagoda-like houses raised several feet above the level, behind stone or brick embankments, necessary in time of flood. At another place the houses were perched on a cliff, nestling picturesquely among trees and shrubs. Between Ichang and Chung-king they entered a region of rock-strewn rapids, which, however, were now partly obscured by the summer floods. The river here swirled seaward at the rate of from seven to ten knots, forming dangerous whirlpools, and needing skilful navigation. Reinhardt had performed the journey many times, and his crew were familiar with every part of the course. The launch thrashed its way against the current, and the hydroplane had no difficulty in following in its wake, escaping the full force of the enormous volume of water by skimming the surface. In mere speed it was the superior craft. Reinhardt had not been very well pleased when he learnt that Burroughs was to join his friend. He was too astute not to be aware that the boy disliked him; but he was also too astute to betray his consciousness of it, and his manner towards Burroughs was if anything even more conciliatory and gracious than to other people. On the day of their departure, when they met at the quayside, he greeted him with the effusiveness of an old friend; and after their arrival at Sui-Fu, seemed to lay himself out to please. But the more pleasant he was, the more distrustful Burroughs became; and the younger man was always annoyed with himself because he feared he only imperfectly concealed his real feelings.