Munroe Kirk
The Blue Dragon: A Tale of Recent Adventure in China

CHAPTER XVII
LEAPING INTO UNKNOWN BLACKNESS

To the friends who had been so mysteriously separated many months earlier, and on the other side of the world, their reunion at this place and under such conditions was bewildering and incredible. They could scarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes. The last time Rob had seen Jo the latter had been shorn of his queue, while now his hair again hung in a long, glossy braid. For a moment they stood clasping each other's hand, after the fashion of the West, and staring without speech. There was so much to be said that they could say nothing. Then they were aroused to a sense of imminent danger by the sounds of ascending voices and hurrying footsteps on the stone stairway. Evidently the present was no time for explanations.

"Quick, Rob! Go up there and hide," whispered Jo, pointing, as he spoke, to a rude ladder leading into the darkness of an upper loft. "Stay there till I come or I cannot save you."

Even as he spoke, Jo turned to the stairway as though about to descend, while Rob sprang to the ladder.

A Chinese soldier was so close at hand that he would have gained the room and caught sight of the fugitive had not the young officer arrested his progress with the stern inquiry:

"What is going on below? Are you all mad or drunk with the juice of poppies? Cannot I meditate in peace without being disturbed by the howlings of you swine? How dare you come up here without orders? Answer me, dog, and son of generations of dogs, before I cause you to be beaten with a hundred blows!"

The terrified soldier, who held a petty office, corresponding to that of corporal of the guard, recoiled from the presence of his angry superior, who, if he had chosen, could have him beaten even to death, and, kotowing until his forehead touched the stones, answered:

"Know, your honorable excellency, that the outer gate has been closed without knowledge of any in the guard-house, and beyond it many persons, mad with anger, are clamorous for admittance. It is a mystery; and before opening the gate I came up here for a look at the outsiders, to make certain that they are not enemies."

"Closed, pig? How can it be that the gate is closed without orders from me, the keeper of the gate? This thing must be examined into," cried the young officer, with every appearance of extreme anger. "Let it be opened without delay. But first come with me and look at these outside howlers. It may be, even as your stupidity suggests, that they are men from Chang-Chow, who have ever been unfriendly to this city because of its greater prosperity."

This was said to give the soldier an opportunity for seeing that no other person was in the room, which fact he would report to his comrades.

As they examined the furious crowd besieging the gate, Jo exclaimed, even more angrily than before:

"Those be no Chang-Chow men, but our friends and own people. They are the dancers, who, together with the good priests, pray constantly for rain, and who went out to the shrine of the holy rain-god but an hour ago. Ah, but you shall smartly suffer for closing a gate of their own city against them. Hasten and open it again if you would have the setting sun behold your worthless head still upon your wretched shoulders."

Thus saying, the young officer spurned the trembling soldier with his foot and followed him down the stairway. In another moment the great gate was opened to the torrent of frantic humanity that rushed in demanding to know what had become of the foreign devil whom they had seen enter only a few minutes before, and where the soldiers had hidden him. Also why they had closed the gate in the very faces of his pursuers.

"Give him up to us," shrieked the priests, "that we may kill him, for doubtless it is he who keeps away the blessed rain."

The denials of the guard that they even had seen any foreigner, or that they had closed the gate, were so little heeded by the clamorous throng, that it might have gone hard with them had not Jo secured a hearing by firing a shot from his revolver, a weapon that he alone of all those present possessed.

"The guard has not seen the foreign devil or surely they would have arrested him," he cried, in the awed silence that followed his shot. "Nor did they close the gate, for they would not dare without my orders, and I gave none. Nor could one man, not even a foreign devil, close the gate unaided, since it often has been tried and they have proved too heavy. Only by magic could he have done this thing, and by magic must he have blinded the eyes of the soldiers so that they did not see him pass them into the city. But your priests have magic as well as the foreigners, and by means of it he may be discovered. Let us then again close the gate that he may not escape, and search for him in every quarter of the city. When he is found let his head promptly be cut off, before he has time again to use his magic. Thus shall the city be purified and the wrath of the rain-god be appeased. Protect the empire! Exterminate foreigners!"

With this rallying-cry of the Great Swords, Jo led the way across the enclosed space separating the inner from the outer gate, past the guard-house, where his soldiers spent their waking hours in gambling with long, slim Chinese cards and piles of beans, and on into the narrow streets of the city. There he was so active in the search that was maintained, until stopped by darkness, that he gained a notable reputation as a hater of foreigners. Thus by his prompt action were Rob's enemies so completely thrown off his track that not once was his real hiding-place approached or even suspected.

In the mean time he, intensely wearied by hours of confinement in that hot, dusty loft, grew vastly impatient of inaction. He was hungry and parched with thirst; no sound penetrated his prison, nor any ray of light. He had no idea of the passage of time, and imagined it to be much later in the night than it really was, when he was startled by a sharp "Hist!" that seemed to come from the top of the ladder.

Too wary to answer it, he only listened, with senses all alert, for something further. Then came a whispered "Rob," and he knew that his only friend in that part of the world was at hand.

"Crawl here on your hands and knees," whispered Jo. "Don't let your boots touch the floor, for the guards below are wide awake and listening to every sound. That's right. Now put on these felt boots. Leave your own behind, and follow me without a word."

Rob obeyed these instructions in all but one thing. His boots were of heavy English leather, lacing high on his ankles, and had been procured in Hankow. They were very comfortable as well as durable, and he could not bear the thought of exchanging them for cloth shoes with felt soles, especially in view of the amount of walking ahead of him if he made good his escape. So, though he put on the pair provided by Jo, he tied the others about his neck, and, thus equipped, noiselessly followed his friend down the ladder to the room below. From this room a narrow doorway opened on the broad parapet of the city wall. Towards this door they were making their cautious way, when suddenly the hastily tied strings of Rob's heavy boots gave way, and they fell to the stone floor with a clatter that awoke the echoes.

Our lad uttered an exclamation of dismay as he groped about the floor to recover his lost treasures; but it was drowned in a tumult of shouts from below. At the same time a scuffling of feet on the stairway proved that the alarmed guard were on their way to investigate.

Jo, knowing nothing of the boots, could not imagine what had happened, and called from the doorway that he already had reached:

"Never mind anything! Come on, quick, for your life!"

But Rob, having found one boot, was determined to have the other, for which he still was feeling over a wide area of floor space. At length his fingers touched it; but as he triumphantly rose to his feet a dark, heavily breathing form, brandishing some sort of a weapon, confronted him. The next instant he had sent the overzealous guard reeling backward with a swinging blow from the heavy boot just recovered, that took him full in the face. With a yell of combined pain and fright, the soldier pitched down the narrow stairway, carrying with him the comrades who were close at his heels. Before the confused heap could disentangle itself, our lads had fled through the doorway and were speeding like shadows along the top of the lofty wall.

As they ran they heard behind them a shrill screaming and a furious beating of gongs. Then from the tall drum-tower in the centre of the city came a deep, booming sound that could be heard for miles. The great drum that is only sounded in times of public peril was arousing the citizens and sending them swarming from their houses. Torches appeared not only in the streets but on the wall behind our flying lads. Then, to Rob's dismay, others began to gleam in front of them. To be sure, these still were a long distance away, but they gave certain evidence that flight in that direction must come to a speedy end.

"What is the use of running any farther?" asked Rob. "We'll only fall in with that torch-light procession all the sooner. Seems to me we might as well stop where we are and see about getting down off this perch."

"There's only one place to get down," answered Jo, "and it still is ahead of us. Run faster! We've got to reach it first."

So the fugitives put on an added burst of speed, though to Rob it seemed that they were only rushing directly into the arms of the advancing torch-bearers.

Suddenly Jo exclaimed, breathlessly, "Here's the place!" and then, to Rob's dismay, he took a flying leap off the parapet into the gulf of impenetrable blackness lying on the outer side of the wall.

For a moment the young American turned sick with the thought that, despairing of ultimate escape, his comrade had chosen death by suicide, and now lay lifeless at the foot of the lofty battlement.

Then came the familiar voice rising from some unknown depth, and calling on him to follow.

"Jump, Rob!" it cried; "you'll land all right, the same as I have."

Even with this assurance our lad hesitated to leap into the darkness. He knew that the wall was at least fifty feet high. There was at its bottom no moat filled with water, into which one might launch himself with safety. "Nor is there any pile of feather-beds, that I know of," he thought, grimly.

From both sides lines of torches were steadily advancing, while up from the city rose a tumult of angry voices. Only in the outside blackness that already had engulfed his friend was there the slightest promise of escape.

"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," he muttered, setting his teeth and bracing himself for the effort. "So, here goes!"

With this he sprang out into space and instantly vanished.

When, a minute later, the advancing lines of torch-bearers came together at that very point, they were bewildered and frightened by the absolute disappearance of those whom they had thought to be so surely within their grasp.

Certainly the magic of the foreign devils was stronger than their priests had led them to believe.

CHAPTER XVIII
A SUPPER OF SACRED EELS

The great plain of northern China is composed of alluvial matter extending to an unknown depth, reddish-yellow in color, and possessed of wonderful fertility. When wet it packs closely; and later, under the influence of a hot sun, it bakes like clay. During seasons of drought it pulverizes to an almost impalpable dust that is blown by fierce winds into ridges and heaps like snow-drifts. These are piled high against obstructing walls, so that sometimes buildings standing in exposed situations are completely buried beneath them. Such a drift of fine sand had formed in an angle of the city wall, along which our lads fled; and Chinese Jo, knowing of it, had selected this as a point for escape.

Thus, when Rob, with many misgivings, leaped into unknown blackness, he had not dropped more than twenty feet when he struck a steep slope of soft material down which he slid with great velocity amid a smother of choking dust. The next thing he knew, Jo was pulling him to his feet, and bidding him make haste to get away before their mode of escape should be discovered by the torch-bearers, who now swarmed on the wall above them. So the lads ran, with Jo acting as guide, across cropless fields, climbing over useless dikes, and stumbling through dry ditches, until a black mass, dimly outlined against the sky, rose before them. As they drew near, this resolved itself into a clump of trees, which, from experience already gained in China, Rob knew must be a sacred grove. It was, in fact, the very grove from which the frantic rain-dancers had streamed in pursuit of him a few hours earlier. Now it was silent and deserted, even the ancient temple of the rain-god, standing in its centre, being empty of priests or worshippers.

Finding the door of this temple open, and hearing no sound within, the fugitives made a cautious entry into the sacred precincts. Here their attention was attracted by a faint glow coming from a heap of embers on an altar that stood before a gigantic image of the rain-god himself.

While endeavoring to get a closer view of the idol, Rob stumbled and pitched forward, thrusting his outstretched hands into an invisible but shallow tank of water. He uttered a yell of affright as he withdrew them and sprang back. "It's a nest of snakes!" he cried – "slimy, wriggling snakes!"

"Hush!" admonished Jo, listening intently; but there was no sound, save of a slight splashing in the as yet unseen water.

"If there were any priests here your racket certainly would have roused them," he said. "But, as nobody seems to be stirring, I expect we've got the place to ourselves. Close the door while I make a light, so that we can see where we are."

From the floor the speaker gathered a few bits of unburned joss-paper that he laid on the faintly glowing altar embers and blew into a blaze. Though this lasted but a moment, it served to show some half-burned candles standing behind the altar, one of which Jo lighted from the expiring flame.

By this faint light the lads discovered a number of crude figures of men and beasts ranged on either side of the rain-god, while a pool of water glittered at their feet. In it squirmed a score or more of eels, emblems of the god, among which Rob had thrust his arms.

"There are your snakes," laughed the young Chinese, "and with them plenty of water to drink, if you are thirsty."

"Goodness knows! I'm thirsty enough, and stuffed full of dust besides, but I wouldn't drink that water, with those things in it, not if I was dying of thirst."

"I would, then," replied Jo, who was too thoroughly Chinese to be fastidious; and, to prove his words, he scooped a handful of the water to his lips.

"It isn't very good water," he acknowledged; "but perhaps we can find some that is better where this came from."

A short search revealed a well just back of the temple, and from it, by means of a section of hollow bamboo attached to a long cord, they drew a plentiful supply of water that was much purer than that in the tank, and was not visibly contaminated by eels, snakes, or any other unpleasant creatures.

"My! what a blessed thing water is!" exclaimed Rob, after a long pull at the bamboo bucket. "I don't wonder that the people of a burned-up country like this pray to a rain-god. Now, if only we had something to eat we'd be well fixed to move on."

"That's easy," replied Jo, reaching into the tank and drawing forth a large, squirming eel as he spoke.

"Eat a snake!" cried Rob, in a disgusted tone. "Not much! I won't!"

Jo smiled as he cut off the eel's head and proceeded to skin its still wriggling body, which he divided into short sections. Wrapping each of these in green bamboo leaves that he procured from a clump of the giant grass growing beside the well, he buried them in the hot sand of the altar, and raked over them a lot of glowing coals.

While he did this, Rob, with the aid of a lighted candle was examining the strange figures that occupied the interior of the temple. All at once, from somewhere behind the great idol, he called out, "Look here, Jo! He's hollow!"

Going to see what was meant, the young Chinese found his friend holding the candle above his head and pointing to a small door, standing slightly ajar, in the back of the image. It was so perfectly fitted that, had it been closed, no trace of an opening could have been discovered.

Climbing to the place, they easily opened the door, and through the aperture thus disclosed crawled into the very body of the rain-god. They found themselves in a space large enough for them to stand up or to lie in at full length, but filled with a confused litter of garments, masks, banners, and other paraphernalia of the priestly trade.

"It's the biggest kind of a find," said Jo, evidently much excited over this discovery, "and it gives me an idea; but I must eat before explaining, so let us go to tiffin."

The cooked eel, which Rob still insisted was nothing more nor less than a snake, looked and smelled so good that the latter's desperate hunger finally persuaded him to taste a morsel. Then he took another, and a few minutes later, gazing thoughtfully at a small heap of well-cleaned bones, he asked Jo if he didn't think they might cook a few more eels while they were about it. An hour later he declared that he had eaten one of the best meals of his life, and was altogether too well content with their present situation to think of travelling any farther that night.

Jo readily agreed that they should spend a few hours where they were, as he wanted time to think out a plan of escape, and believed that for the present this temple was as safe a place as they were likely to find. So, while they removed all traces of their presence, Rob arranged the priestly vestments they had found inside the rain-god into a sort of a bed, and a little later, lying on this, each of the lads gave the other an account of his adventures since they had parted in far-away America. Rob's story we know, as we do that of Jo up to the time of his commitment to prison in New York, charged with being a Chinese laundry-worker who had illegally entered the United States.

"I was kept there two weeks," he now said, "and treated worse than a dog all the time. They would not allow me to write or telegraph to you or any of my friends, and finally carried me off at night in a prison-van, together with a dozen coolies gathered from different parts of the country, who hated me because I had cut off my queue. After that we travelled handcuffed together, two and two, in a crowded immigrant-car, to San Francisco, where we were locked up in a filthy shed until a steamer was ready to sail. On our journey to that point we got very little to eat, but what we had was fairly good. The food given us in the shed was bad, but what we got on the steamer, where we were put in the hold, without being allowed to go on deck during the whole voyage, was simply rotten.

"The ship was under contract to deliver us at Shanghai; but when she anchored off Woo-Sung and they began to transfer us into a launch that would take us to the city, fourteen miles farther up the river, we were in such a horrible condition that the other passengers objected to having us on board. So we were set ashore at Woo-Sung and told we might walk the rest of the way.

"I was so sick and weak that, after we had walked a few miles, I gave out and laid down by the road-side. There, I suppose, I should have frozen to death, for it was bitter cold, winter weather, if a farmer had not found me and taken me to his house. My father afterwards made him a rich man for it. He fed, clothed, and kept me until I could get word to some friends in Shanghai, after which, of course, I was all right.

"Finding that my father had been transferred to Pao-Ting-Fu – between here and Pekin, you know – I went there; and when he heard how I had been treated, he was so angry that he swore he'd do everything in his power to drive foreigners out of China. He did drive a good many from his own district, especially railroad people; but when the Great Swords began killing them, he drew the line and said that that was going too far. One day a Boxer army came along with a lot of missionaries, whom they proposed to burn to death in the city temple. My father told them they must give up their prisoners to him, and when they refused he ordered out his own soldiers, killed a lot of the Boxers, rescued the missionaries, and sent them under guard to the coast. For that he was recalled to Pekin, and Mandarin Ting Yuan was put in his place. Last week that man turned over fifteen missionary people, some of them women and little children, to be tortured and put to death by the Boxers of Pao-Ting-Fu."

"But what were you doing all this time?" asked Rob, his face paling at thought of these horrors.

"I had obtained a commission as captain of imperial troops, and was sent down here, where I have been ever since."

"You haven't seen any missionaries killed, have you?" demanded Rob, anxiously.

"No, and I don't think I should have, without trying to save them, in spite of the way I was treated in America. But I received orders from Pekin only yesterday not to oppose the Boxers in anyway, no matter what they did. I was up in that watch-tower wondering what I ought to do if any missionaries should come this way, when I saw the rain-dancers chasing you. Of course, I didn't recognize you; but the moment I discovered you were a foreigner I knew that I couldn't stand by and see you killed without making an effort to prevent it."

"Didn't you know who I was until we stood together on the watch-tower?" asked Rob, curiously.

"No. I had not time for a good look at you until that moment. Even then I couldn't at first believe it really was you; it seemed so utterly impossible that you could be in China."

"What do you propose to do now?"

"Stay with you until I get you to a place of safety."

"But you will lose your position in the army if you leave your post."

"Yes."

"And perhaps be shot as a deserter."

"Quite so."

"Aren't you almost certain to be killed if you are found in company with a foreigner whom you are aiding to escape?"

"Yes."

"And you are willing to risk your life, besides throwing away your career, for the sake of one of the very people who treated you so shamefully when you were in America?"

"It is a saying of the ancients," replied Jo, "that friendship shines among the brightest jewels in the ring of life; also, that life without friendship is as a barren fruit tree, and that for a true friendship life itself is not too high a price to pay. Therefore, may I not risk, and gladly, a life of little value, to save that of one who, though he is of a people who ill-treated me, is also the best friend I have in all the world? Did he not, even when we were strangers, fight to save me from abuse? and can I do less for him now that we are friends? So it is foolish for you to ask questions, since it is assured that until I can leave you in a place of safety your enemies are my enemies, your friends are my friends, and wherever you go there go I also."

"Then," said Rob, who was greatly affected by these words, "let us stay right where we are until morning, for I want to think over all you have told me."

After this the lads did not talk any more, but a few minutes later were sound asleep inside the very rain-god to which one of them would have been sacrificed had he been caught in that vicinity a few hours earlier.