But how to kill time? He could not attend to his business; there was little else to be done except play cards, and besides having no money, he hated cards now with a savage hatred. Hearing, however, from one of the Englishmen in the place that there was good duck-shooting some few miles up the river, he resolved to go for a day’s sport. The Viceroy’s request that the Europeans would not venture beyond their own settlement was forgotten, in spite of the fact that it had lately been repeated with some urgency. The country was disturbed, and the swamps haunted by the wild fowl were in the midst of the district affected. They surrounded a number of small villages which were known to be the nests of river pirates, and hot-beds of the insurrectionary movement. To the ordinary traveller the villages were almost unapproachable, being situated on dry tracts encompassed by the reedy marshes that extended for some miles inland from the banks of the river. One morning Errington started in a native sampan with his Chinese servant. On approaching the spot of which he had been told, he noticed that Lo San looked uneasily at some large Chinese characters painted in white on a rock at the river-side. "Well, what is it?" he asked. "Ho tao pu ching," replied the man. "Way no flee." "Not free! Not clear, I suppose you mean. Why not? There’s plenty of room between the rocks." "Pilates, sah; plenty bad fellas." "Hang the pirates! It’s very kind of the billposter, but we’ve nothing worth scooping. Go on." But game appeared to be scarce. Duck were seen in the distance, but Errington could never get within range. Determined not to return empty-handed, he went farther into the swamp, and was punting towards a thick growth of reeds fringing a piece of open water, on the far side of which he had noticed some birds, when his eye was caught by a boat floating apparently towards this open water down a narrow and irregular channel from the Yang-tse. The channel was so much overgrown with reeds and rushes that it was not easy to distinguish the nature of the approaching craft. Errington took up his binocular and scanned it, expecting to discover that it was a sampan, like that in which he was himself travelling. But on closer inspection it proved to be more like a dinghy, and probably belonged to some vessel anchored in the neighbourhood. It was too far off for him to see clearly the two men in the dinghy; they had their backs to him, but their general appearance suggested Chinamen. All at once a slight turn in their course revealed what had previously not been visible, they were towing an object of much larger size. It was impossible to distinguish it; it might be a raft or a large sampan loaded with goods. Reckless as his mood was, Errington was not utterly rash, or disposed to court danger out of pure wilfulness. While he was watching the boats, he drew the sampan within the shelter of the clump of reeds through which he was making his way.