Some day I shall go and get him and bring him back
to live with our family.--Ah! here we stand and gossip like old women,
while the sun is sinking. It is time to take the fish and the oysters
to the market. Whose turn is it to go?"
Four men stepped forward and raised the wooden yoke having attached to
it buckets of oysters and baskets of fish. The sack containing the
crabs Lihoa himself swung over his shoulder, and they started at a
quick pace up the hill over which the path to Victoria lay. The women
as they turned to go with the children to the huts to prepare the
evening meal bade them farewell and called out, "A fortunate sale!"
Night settled down quickly, for in a tropical climate the twilight does
not last so long as with us. In Hongkong the sun hardly sets before it
is dark, and this evening as the moon, almost at the full, stood high
in the heavens, Lihoa had no occasion to light the little lantern which
he carried with him. He found the footpath leading up the hill without
difficulty, and his people followed after him goose-fashion in single
file. Almost at the top they came to the cell in the rock occupied by
the priest of the God of the Golden Fish, and in the moonlight to their
astonishment saw in the broad open space in front of it a group of men
from the neighboring villages.
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