Transcript of Revolt of the Birds
CHAPTER I. THE REVOLT OF THE BIRDS by Melville Davison Post. CHAPTER I. It was the last outpost of down -going men, a sort of seaman's club in the abominable environs of Hong Kong. The Wu Feng Company maintained it for the white officers employed in its service. Everybody knows the reputation of the Wu Feng Company. It is the most notorious of all the Oriental companies trading in the China Sea. Gun -running, opium, even piracy are charged against it when its ships are out of the beaten track. It was a room under a warehouse looking out on a sort of canal in which the water seemed to lie stagnant and unmoving. There were tables in it and a dirty matting on the floor. Against the wall were a few shelves made from packing cases. In them were some stained dog -eared works on navigation. There was dirty canvas on the wall. There was the stench of alcohol in it and tobacco. A single window fouled with cobweb, looking out on the canal alone lighted it. One marked a smoky lamp against the wall, a cheap kerosene lamp that the Germans used to put out in the East. It was afternoon and hot. A few men were in the room. They were strange human derelicts on the way down, but maintaining a sort of air, a sort of manner, as though it were a memory from the honorable life from which they had descended. A queer group gathered from all portions of the earth. They were all at the very end of life. I mean at the end of any form of life that one could speak of. This club of the Wu -Fang Company was the last stand of their fleet in the world. One stepped off from it into the abyss of the Far East. A little wizened Chinaman, gliding about in slippered feet, carried in the drink and the tobacco that the Wu -Fang Company provided. The drink was a poisonous brandy. I had drifted in here on my mission. Someone had told me to see Bennett of the Wu -Fang Company. He would have the last knowledge of men disappearing into the mystery of the East, the last glimpse of them as they descended through its fluid floor. He now sat beyond me at a table by the window. He was a big man with pale blue eyes, a heavy pasty face pitted with smallpox, a strange human creature. It was impossible to tell the nationality of the man. I think he was an American, and I think he must have been bred and trained for the sea. He might have been in the naval service of the States in his far -off youth. I knew what was commonly known about the man before I went to find him. He had been in every form of service and on every sea. He knew all about the world of waters, and he had gone steadily