“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”
“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”
“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”
“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,
When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”
During the year 1344, the One-Eyed Man of Stone was found at a place called Huanglingkuang by some labourers, who were repairing the banks of the Yellow River. The rebellions resulting ended in the expulsion of the Mongols and the establishment of the Ming dynasty by the Buddhist acolyte, Chu Yuan Chang.
Thus through all the ages of China—and they have been many—this terebration of man hasceased at no time. Yet the Tien Tu Hin, with more than a ten million swarm of human teredo, with more than all the wreckers that have gone before, is still silent. What will come out of it man not only does not know, but its immensity forbids conjecture. Among members it is called the Hung Kia, the Deluge Family; a family so vast and wide that it is beyond our comprehension; it exceeds anything ever conceived by man, and its labyrinths extend from Siberia to Siam—half of Europe could be lost in them. They crawl under oceans to the Straits Settlements; throughout the Malay Archipelago; the Philippines, India, Burma, Australia, the Pacific Islands, North, Central, and South America. This brotherhood of the Deluge Family, bound by the same oaths, actuated by the same principles and obedient to the same commands, has in its hidden recesses untold millions. While there have been directed against it the most terrible penal laws, they avail not nor reach down into the depths where it lives, travels, thrives, and year after year, in its endless labyrinths, becomes more dreaded, its murmur more terrible.
The terror about this society is its serenity and long quietude. Up to the present time it has hardly more than growled, but silently these two hundred and forty years it has been burrowing, burrowing.
A statesman in the reign of Kiuking said:
“The Empire rests on something like a volcano.”
Occasionally there have been sporadic outbreaks, and while some of them have been extensive enough to annihilate many European kingdoms, they are only thought of in the light of incidents, a source for anecdotes.
The hour of the Rebellion is not yet; but will come with a manifestation from Heaven. This may be a red star in the East, or when the Five Flags rise of their own accord from the earth, but more probably when the phœnix sing from the wutung, for at that hour the Man has been born, and on that day from all the fields of the Empire shall rise up those sown of the dragon’s teeth: then will the silence of Ages be broken, labyrinths uncoil, and a murmur come from depths so deep and unknown that even the world itself shall shrink with dread.
The Tien Tu Hin was founded about 1674, in the Province of Fokien, in the Putien District of the Fuchin Prefecture. Here, among the Chui Lien Hills, in a vale charming on account of its solitude, was situated the Buddhist monastery of Shaolintze, built by the priest Tahtsunye during the Tang dynasty of the seventh century. But a thousand years later the monks—whether forgetful or in accordance with the wishes of the Immortal Tah—spent their time in the study of the arts ofwar, eventually becoming so famous for their knowledge and ability that men came from all parts of the Empire to receive instruction.
In the reign of Kanghi, the tributary state of Silu threw off its allegiance and sent an army into China, defeating successively all Imperial forces brought against it. Edicts were posted throughout the Empire calling upon someone to free the country from the enemy. Chu Kiuntah, a student at the monastery, took the edict and hastened to the Vale of Shaolintze. After consultation the one hundred and twenty-eight monks offered their services.
The Emperor raised them all to the rank of general, conferred plenary powers upon them, and gave into their keeping a triangular iron seal engraved with four characters.
In three months the Prince of Silu sued for peace, and the monks returned to the capital in the midst of the triumphant songs of the populace, while the grateful monarch offered them any offices they might choose. They asked nothing other than permission to live in peaceful seclusion amongst their hills of Chui Lien.
Years passed, and there rose high in court—as in the courts of other nations—two ministers, Chenwangyao and Changchensui, who plotted for the seizure of the Empire, believing that it was wellwithin their grasp if they could get rid of the monks of Shaolintze.
Accordingly they memoralised the Emperor, accusing the monks of treason; showing that since they destroyed the victorious army of Silu with ease, it would not be difficult for them to conquer China. They thus persuaded the Emperor that his domains might at any time be taken from him and begged to be allowed to destroy them secretly.
Receiving the Emperor’s sanction, the two ministers placed themselves at the head of the Imperial Guards and set out for Fokien. But after arriving in the Prefecture of Fuchui, they were unable to find the monastery hidden away among the Chui Lien Hills, and were about to turn back when they came upon the monk, Ma Eifuh.
Ma Eifuh ranked seventh in military skill among the monks, but to all accounts first in lechery, and owing to his hot passion for the wife and the daughter of Chu Kuintah, had been bambooed and expelled from the monastery. It was while wandering about, raging under this punishment and disgrace, that he came upon the Imperial Guards.
That night he led them to the monastery in the Vale of Shaolintze. Gunpowder was placed about its walls and exploded. One hundred and nine of the monks were instantly killed, but the surviving eighteen, still retaining possession ofthe triangular seal, escaped into a court and then crawling through a dog hole got clear of the burning buildings. Aided by a thick fog, which came suddenly down into the Vale, they passed the Guards and proceeded to the village of Huangchuen, where thirteen died. Hence comes one of the terrible sayings of the Deluge Family:
“On Huangchuen road they died,And through a myriad years we abide,They shall be avenged.”
“On Huangchuen road they died,And through a myriad years we abide,They shall be avenged.”
“On Huangchuen road they died,And through a myriad years we abide,They shall be avenged.”
“On Huangchuen road they died,
And through a myriad years we abide,
They shall be avenged.”
The five survivors, Tsai Tehchung, Tang Tahung, Ma Chaohing, Hu Tehti, and Li Shepkai, are now known as the Five Patriarchs. These five monks, having burned the bodies of their brothers, were proceeding to Chung Shawanken, in the Prefecture of Huenchuenfu, when suddenly—as the Jews in their flight from the army of Egypt—they found water in front of them and the Imperial Guards in their rear.
The immortal founder of the monastery, Tahtsuntze, seeing their danger, sent down two clouds, which changed into planks of copper and iron, forming a bridge over which the monks passed and safely reached the Temple of Kaochi.
After several days they continued on their way eastward, but before long learned that soldiers were again in pursuit, and thereupon they crossed over into Hukwang where they stayed fortwo weeks. Again narrowly escaping the Guards, the monks fled to the monastery of Pao Chu, where they remained a number of days overwhelmed with distress and despair.
But it was here that they met Chen Chinan, destined, as it seemed, by Heaven to become the founder of the Tien Tu Hin.
Chen Chinan, a member of the Hanlin Academy, had been President of the Board of Censors at the time when Chenwangyao and Changchensui memoralised the throne to destroy the monks, and had vigorously remonstrated with the Emperor. This remonstrance brought upon him the hatred of the two ministers that accused him as being a supporter of the monks. He was thereupon deprived of his office and expelled from court.
Having returned to his home in Hukwang, he was devoting himself to study when he met the monks as they were fleeing from the monastery of Pao Chu. Filled with compassion, he led them to his home, called the Grotto of the White Stork.
So now, when one member meets another and asks him whence he comes, the answer is: “From the White-Stork Grotto.”
After taking care of the monks in his home for several weeks, Chen Chinan took them to an extensive establishment called the Hunghauting,—the Red Flower Pavilion,—where they dwelt untilone day, as they were sauntering along the banks of the beautiful Kungwei River, they spied a strange object floating in its current; this object brought about their departure.
Bringing the flotsam ashore, the monks found it to be a large stone tripod having two ears, such as are used in burning incense. On the bottom were engraved four large characters: Fan Tsing, Fuh Ming, Destroy Tsing, Restore Ming. Around these was a circle of smaller characters denoting its weight to be fifty-two catties and thirteen taels.
The monks carried this granite vessel to the top of a neighbouring hill, where they erected an altar of stones. They used guava twigs for candles and grass for incense, water instead of wine. As they prayed to Heaven that a Ming Emperor would avenge the crime of Shaolintze, the twigs and grass burst into flame. Seeing this the monks returned in great haste to the Red Flower Pavilion and told Chen Chinan what had happened.
For a long time this man, destined to some yet unknown end, remained in deep meditation.
“It is the will of Heaven,” he said presently, “that the dynasty of Tsing shall be destroyed.”
When the time came for the five monks to depart, Chen Chinan stood before them, and lifting his hands, spoke:
“Go forth, ye Five Patriarchs, to all quartersof the earth; over mountains and moorlands, across the great lakes and five seas. Transmit from man to man our secret words and signs. Be patient, and Heaven shall in its wisdom manifest the time for the assembling of the Deluge Family.”
Chen Chinan then returned to his Grotto of the White Stork, while the Five Patriarchs went their separate ways to organise the Deluge in Five Grand Sections, and to prepare for their assembly.
More than two hundred and forty years have passed, yet their successors cease in no way this preparation.
The Deluge Family founded, this dreaded assembly of men above whose labyrinths a third of mankind waits to be redeemed by it or be drowned in it—a Deluge of blood: to hurl the world into war and bring out of it Universal Peace.
The Deluge Family—like other families—has acquired in the course of time peculiarities besides that of vastness.
In writing the members use superfluous or half characters in such a manner as to make what is written unreadable to the uninitiated. In speaking they have a vocabulary of their own.
In the language of the Hung Kia, fowls are known by numbers; a goose is six, a duck eight. Beef is called great vegetables, and a fish a tail-shaker or wave-borer. A dog is a mosquito andthat insect a needle, while a mosquito curtain is a lantern. Wine is known as red or green water; oil as family harmony and water as three rivers. To ask a person to smoke tobacco is to request him to bite ginger. To smoke opium is biting clouds and the name of opium is clouds travelling. To ask persons to dine is inviting them to farm sand and waves. A teacup is called a lotus bud; a wine cup a lotus seed, and a plate, a lotus leaf. Chop-sticks are golden selectors and roast pork becomes golden brindle. In speaking of the Deluge Family, a Lodge is called the Red Flower Pavilion or the Pine and Cedar Grove. To join the Society is to enter the Circle or be Born. To hold a meeting is known as letting loose the horses. A member is called heung—fragrance or a hero. A non-member is a partridge or wind of a leper. A road is a thread, and to travel is walking the thread. Sometimes the meaning of their vocabulary is unaccountable. An Ancestral Hall is called a privy and a market Universal Peace. In this strange language a bed is a drying stage and to sleep is to dry. A sword is called silken crepe, and a dagger young lion. A cannon is a black dog, its report a dog’s bark, its powder a dog’s dung. A handkerchief is a white cloud, a fan the crescent moon. The ears are known as fair wind, and to cut them off is to lower the fair wind. Cutting off the head is called washing the face. The seais the great sky, and to murder by drowning is to bathe; while to be drowned in the sea is to be lowered into the great sky.
The members have numerous ways of testing one another by arranging and handing tea-cups, tobacco pipes, and other articles.
One member may ask another why his nose bleeds, and he answers: “It is the Waters of the Deluge flowing out of their channels.” This terrible enigma is derived from a saying by Mencius, “And a Deluge shall overflow the country.”
A member may ask: “Why is your face yellow?” and is answered: “It is troubled for my country.” Or, “Why is your face red?” and answered: “I have been drinking wine in the Temple of War.”
“What do you hope for?”
“The Market of Universal Peace.”
The entire ritual is carried on in verse—a rhythm of terrors—while conversation between members is in poetic form. If a member is asked to rescue a brother it is done by placing a pot of tea with a single cup before him. Should he be unable to do anything with the commands he throws the tea away, but if able, he drinks, saying:
“A horseman comes with might and speedTo save his prince, alone, in need,And with him comes the Age’s hordeTo give the throne to our Ming Lord.”
“A horseman comes with might and speedTo save his prince, alone, in need,And with him comes the Age’s hordeTo give the throne to our Ming Lord.”
“A horseman comes with might and speedTo save his prince, alone, in need,And with him comes the Age’s hordeTo give the throne to our Ming Lord.”
“A horseman comes with might and speed
To save his prince, alone, in need,
And with him comes the Age’s horde
To give the throne to our Ming Lord.”
If a pot of tea and three cups are put before a member he is being asked to take part in a fight. If he consents he drinks the middle cup, repeating:
“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,And through all Ages let their fame,Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”
“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,And through all Ages let their fame,Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”
“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,And through all Ages let their fame,Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”
“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,
To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,
And through all Ages let their fame,
Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”
There are thirty-six arrangements of tea-cups, each signifying something different and each answerable with a verse. In the like manner the presence of an unknown brother is made manifest first by some secret sign, which he should answer, then by the repetition of a verse. Should a junk be attacked by pirates and the crew as well as pirates be members of the Deluge Family, the crew repeats:
“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,And softly shines by day or night;Men rob not one anotherWhen in the Circle born a brother.”
“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,And softly shines by day or night;Men rob not one anotherWhen in the Circle born a brother.”
“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,And softly shines by day or night;Men rob not one anotherWhen in the Circle born a brother.”
“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,
And softly shines by day or night;
Men rob not one another
When in the Circle born a brother.”
Members sometimes teach their wives verses for emergencies, as in rebellions, and should an attempt be made to ravish her, she repeats:
“The sun shines redly in the East,I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,Fresher flowers beyond are found,My husband to the Flood is bound.”
“The sun shines redly in the East,I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,Fresher flowers beyond are found,My husband to the Flood is bound.”
“The sun shines redly in the East,I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,Fresher flowers beyond are found,My husband to the Flood is bound.”
“The sun shines redly in the East,
I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,
Fresher flowers beyond are found,
My husband to the Flood is bound.”
Whenever a member needs assistance in a fight, he holds up the right hand with thumb, first, and second fingers expanded an equal distance apart, while the third and fourth fingers are closed; at the same time, the thumb and the first two fingers of the left hand are placed open on the right elbow. To call to battle is to hold the right hand over the head with the thumb pointing upwards. We know of nothing more terrifying than this pointing up of thumbs to Heaven.
When a fight is about to take place, the queue is looped over the right shoulder after having been brought around the neck and fastened in what is called the sign of Shou. A cry rises from those that have laid upon themselves this sign. It is not thunder, not a moan. It is the growl of Eternity, “Hung Shun Tien”—The Deluge obeys Heaven.
This vast Brotherhood is subject to twenty-one rules: Ten Prohibitions; Ten Punishable Offences. In addition there are thirty-six oaths bequeathed by the Five Patriarchs. Death is the inevitable punishment for those that break them.
Oath Seven reads: “If any brother is unable to escape you swear to assist him, no matter what are the consequences. If there are any that do not adhere to these feelings of kinship, let thunder annihilate them.”
Number Twenty reads: “If officials arrest a brother, his escape is most important. You swearto see to this. Those that refuse to give such aid shall die beneath ten thousand knives.”
The last of the Great Oaths is the Apocalypse of this Empire in its gloom. “All ye that enter the Deluge Family, scholars, husbandmen, merchants, industrious labourers, mechanics, Confucianists, Buddhists, Taoists, physicians, astrologers, geomancers, lictors, thieves, pirates, officials, executioners, and all others, swear loyalty above all things. Ye are the hands and feet of one body, obedient to the Head. Ye must bow down to the Five Seal-bearers and obey them. If any show duplicity or fail to exert themselves, let them die beneath ten thousand knives.”
Such is the Tien Tu Hin, the Association of Heaven and Earth: enormous, unseen; filled with terror and serenity; vast, invisible; its labyrinths endless as are the veins of the earth, and like the earth’s depths, asurge with molten lava; calm, portentous, peaceful, terrible; born to avenge a crime; fostered to destroy a dynasty; matured to establish Universal Peace.
By the hand of thoughtful Fate the Breton was led into its labyrinths and became part of it and of its terror.
CHAPTER NINETHE DERELICT
The Brotherhood of Tien Tu Hin, swallowing in its deluge all degrees of mankind, likewise swallows now and then one of those nameless Europeans whom Fate has utterly cast adrift in those mysterious currents of the Orient Seas.
While not generally understood, yet it is true that most Occidentals, who by choice have drifted heretofore on Orient streams, have almost always been derelicts of some kind. Thither noble scions, criminals, priests, soldiers of fortune have drifted. Some have prospered and some in the wild surge of these seas have been wrecked and sunk.
The flotsam of humanity, like the drift of rivers, like the derelicts of the sea, is but wreckage of some sort hurried along in those irresistible currents that we call Fate. Each village has its little eddy where, round and round in quiet whirl, the neighbouring drift collects. Each country has its maelstrom, a black whirlpool where is collected the debris of human kind. This debris, starting at the top in wide circles, whirls round; swirling deeperand deeper until it disappears through that narrow abysmal funnel. These terrible vortices are never still and never without their debris. London is such a maelstrom, so is Paris, so is New York.
The world also has its colossal eddy, but they that drift upon the world’s currents are derelicts, not debris; it is true both are wreckage, but there is a wide difference between them. Debris is scum; derelicts are wrecks. Scum from scum arises; derelicts may be the wrecks of greatness. Debris is unnamed; the House of Orleans is a derelict, and its princes have died by the wash of the China Sea.
The seas are awash with derelicts of different kinds. Some, in due time, like the hulks of the old East Indiamen, become thrifty, incrustating themselves with spray gusts of silver, and furring themselves with the fur of their drift; a wealth clings to them and they become stranded by riches. They are found imbedded in all Oriental ports, and while they have formed a new environment, they still remain conspicuous.
Again these seas are adrift with derelicts that would succour; as when men float on the sea in an open boat suddenly behold with immeasurable joy a speck in the distance. It approaches, they board it, but only too often to find it hollow.
Derelicts most known are those that destroy. Deserted, forsaken, alone in this coaxing wildernessof waves, they drink deeply of their unrestraint and become master-derelicts of death; hurling themselves, areek with froth, on vessels they sink and on rocks which destroy.
In a fisherman’s hut near by the Bay of Tai Wan, a hovel mud-walled, windowless, rice-thatched, cluttered with poverty, dark and dismal, there lay dying a derelict of this latter kind.
The only brightness within the hut was a floating taper burning before the Ancestral Tablets and sending through the gloom its trembling, hesitant rays. This glimmering light that fell agleam on the tablets lit the faces and forms of three persons, two peasants and a foreigner. The stranger lay upon the only bed in the hut, and the peasants squatted beside him. A clot of blood was upon his bosom, and a red froth oozed from between his teeth, which the woman was wiping away with a wet cloth, while her husband kept his eyes fixed and reverent upon a Great Medallion suspended from the neck of the dying man, and glittering beside the wound in his breast.
This Symbol or Seal consisted of two parts: the outer being about four inches square, but quinquangular in shape and made from a rare green stone found only in the jungled mountains of Yunnan, resembling the green of a tiger’s eye; gleaming, glittering in the dusk. On each of the five corners was a raised gold character, and a goldenrim ran around the edge. The second part consisted of a mottled bloodstone placed on the centre of the other, octagonal in shape, about an inch in diameter, and having on its high, rounded apex a gold trigram, the meaning of which is not less terrible than it is unknown. This blood-green stone with its glint of gold glittered with a light peculiarly significant, and the peasant’s eyes grew round as he watched it shudder on the breast of the dying man.
He whispered to his wife: “It is the Great Symbol.”
She drew back with an expression of terror.
“If they find him here, we will be beheaded!”
“Yes.”
“What shall we do?”
“Nurse him.”
The woman wiped the red froth from the man’s lips and the red clot from his bosom.
“If he dies?” the peasant woman whispered.
“We will bury him.”
“And that?” she pointed to the Great Symbol.
The man on the bed moved uneasily; his eyes opened, but he saw nothing.
“He is going to talk again in his own speech,” said the woman, moving cautiously away. “Find someone to understand,” she pleaded. “Who knows what he may say?—and perhaps he will tell what to do with that Eye.”
“I heard to-day that a foreigner was in the village.”
“One of these?”
“No; a priest from Yingching.”
The peasant buried his face in his arms, and for some time crouched on his heels. Afterward he went quietly out.
The woman fetched some clean water, and continued to bathe the man’s bosom and lips. She crooned to herself.
“I do not see why men do these things. If they would only plant their own rice this would not happen. I do not understand what crop they expect to get. When the rice-fields are burned how can there be any rice? When the mulberry bushes are cut down how can there be any worms? When the worms are dead who shall spin silk? They kill, kill, kill, and their killings they cannot eat. They bring home neither pigs nor fowl. Once I said to one of them, ‘Why do you kill?’ And he answered, ‘We are soldiers.’ Now I do not understand that.
“Poor man, and what will your wife say? To come across the Five Seas just to get stuck full of holes. Now who will carry back your bones? I do not know why you foreigners are such devils to fight and to pray. My husband belongs to the Deluge Family, but I will not let—— No, no, you must not get up. Poor man, poor man, I don’tsuppose you will ever fight any more. If you had only spoken to your wife she could have told you that this would happen. When men don’t speak to their wives they get into trouble. I wish you did not have that Eye upon your breast. How terrible it is to be a great man; how sorry I am for their—— No, no, do not talk, you are getting blood all over my bed.”
The man, endeavouring to speak, had turned upon his side, and a quantity of blood spurted from his mouth. After that he rested easier, and the red froth ceased to ooze from between his teeth, though it still came from the wound in his side. This the woman continued to wipe away.
Suddenly he snapped his fingers imperiously.
“Cha——”
The woman hastily brought a bowl of tea and held it to his lips, but he could not drink.
Thus as she tended him the hours of night passed. She became restless, and sometimes left his side to peer into the darkness, where was heard only the swish of wing and splash of wild fowl.
There came a mumbling from the bed, then coughing, and another spurting of blood. As the woman washed his face he opened his eyes, bright with the delirium of death, and resting his hand upon her head he began to speak in gentle, piteous tones.
The woman, turning away, saw through theopen door the approach of a bobbing lantern. She returned to the bed and threw a rough cloth over the wounded man, put a jar in front of the taper, and seating herself by the door waited.
The Breton priest entered, followed by the woman’s husband and several others. Without hesitation he crossed the room and sat down by the bed. The woman took the jar from in front of the taper, and as the priest drew the rough coverlet from the dying man the light fell upon the Great Symbol. The men that came with him gazed at it for a moment then bowed their heads thrice to the floor.
As the priest took hold of the man’s hand he opened his eyes to look at him and smiled. Then in a low, uncertain voice began a quatrain of college revelry. His eyes closed; he mumbled.
Suddenly he began to speak again. He pleaded and a woman’s name trembled on his lips.
The Breton turned away.
The derelict choked, spat blood upon the Breton, then lay still. Tears rolled down his cheeks, sometimes mingling with his blood to scintillate for an instant like rubies on the coarse cloth. This grief of his was more than bitter—it was the grief of the strong dying, a packing of pain into Eternity. He moaned and brought a pallor to the cheeks of the priest. He sighed and the pain of it was indescribable.
Presently he began to breathe hoarsely, then mumbling, speaking—the speech of his wild life. One moment in combat with Malay praus; hurtling through the water; repelling boarders; cursing, exultant, frenzied and the swish of the kris was in the air. Then followed commands, as when the typhoon is on sea, and in his quivering tones was the echo of the wind’s scream. Fights in the jungle—soft, creeping, peering, throttling. Then in the open, commands, curses, silence.
Suddenly, as he muttered the ritual of the Deluge Family—sombre and unrelenting, he rose up in bed with his hand over the dripping wound. As he fell the priest turned him gently upon his side, and taking the bowl of fresh water the woman brought him, bathed his face.
The dying man opened his eyes.
“Where am I?”
“In a hut near the village of Tai Po.”
“Who are you?”
“A priest.”
“A rogue like myself.”
“You are wounded.”
“I am dying.”
The derelict raised his head and looked sternly at the men in the room, who seeing him look at them, fell upon their knees, striking their heads thrice upon the floor.
“It is well.”
He studied the sad profile above him.
“Priest,” his voice was without its wildness, “priest, I am dying. It is what I have been trying to do for many years—by land and by sea——”
The pain of speaking became too great.
He fumbled with the chain around his neck, consisting of gold links each about an inch and a half in length, and made up of two dragons contending for a pearl.
The priest removed it, and the derelict, taking it in his hands, whispered:
“Closer!”
The Breton bent near to him, and the chain with the Great Seal of the Tien Tu Hin was hung around his neck.
“Never take it off,” the dying man whispered hoarsely. “I—I—command.” His eyes closed and the pallor of death came upon him.
The priest leaned close; all listened, for the speech of the derelict was precious.
His lips moved, and the Breton bending closer heard:
“Alice——”
And so he died.
The priest on his knees held his crucifix over the body of the derelict.
Hours passed, and still the Breton did not move. The stillness in the room was unbroken, and the men crouching upon the floor hardly breathed.The only sounds were the weird flight of wild fowl as they winged their way through the night.
A cock crowed.
Night was ending, and the priest, rising, stood before the men with the Great Symbol glittering on his breast. Thrice again the men struck their foreheads upon the earthen floor.
“At the break of day we will bury him.”
The men wrapped the body in a shroud of rough cloth, and when darkness began to give away to that cold grey dusk that, without being night nor day, is yet the sick pallor of Time, they went forth and followed along the embankment of the paddy-fields until they came to a low hillside close to the sea.
It was natural that this casket of the derelict should mould near the ocean’s wash, for on its turbulent stream he had been blown hither and thither, unknown, unseen, a wreck in its wayward currents. There had he drifted and fought and mourned—a sad and perhaps terrible soul. Well might the sea dirge to his spirit its eonic plaint—that melancholy chant of Eternity. And well was it that they should remain forever together, the living sorrow and the dead.
Low down on the hillside they dug his grave.
A rift of light, almost lurid, glowed just above the rim of swaying waters.
They put the derelict in his grave, and the priest,holding his crucifix above him, stood over the open tomb. Upon his upturned face shone the red light of morning, while a vaporous mist like streams of incense rose from the grave and broken earth around him. As the priest prayed the Great Symbol rose and fell upon his bosom with the rhythm of his silent prayer, quivering and afire in the red glare of heaven.
The men, seeing the Great Eye flashing redly, knelt down before the Breton and rested their foreheads upon the earth.
The prayer ended; then the priest sounded, terrifying in its majestic intonations, the awful Taps of the God of Wrath.
“Dies Irae, dies illaSolvet saeculum in favillâTeste David cum Sybilla.“Lacrymosa dies illaDua refurget ex favillâJudicandus homo reusHuic ergo parce Deus.”
“Dies Irae, dies illaSolvet saeculum in favillâTeste David cum Sybilla.“Lacrymosa dies illaDua refurget ex favillâJudicandus homo reusHuic ergo parce Deus.”
“Dies Irae, dies illaSolvet saeculum in favillâTeste David cum Sybilla.
“Dies Irae, dies illa
Solvet saeculum in favillâ
Teste David cum Sybilla.
“Lacrymosa dies illaDua refurget ex favillâJudicandus homo reusHuic ergo parce Deus.”
“Lacrymosa dies illa
Dua refurget ex favillâ
Judicandus homo reus
Huic ergo parce Deus.”
CHAPTER TENTWILIGHT
The Bay of Tai Wan, where the Breton had been for more than a month and upon whose shore he had buried the derelict, is a long distance down the coast southeast of Yingching, and is famous on account of the evil spoken of it. This bay and country has a bad name, which is due to God as well as to those that dwell on its wild wash.
The waters of the bay are not blue, but a reddish-brown, and are serrated with the fins of the spotted shark, which lurk in its depths; for the feed in this bay is sometimes abundant, not only when the gale is upon the sea, but more often when men come together. The mountains that surround the bay on the south, west, and north are not high, but they are sinister; their south slopes desolate; those on the north gloomy with thickets. The narrow valleys extending back from the bay are diked, terraced, and made into paddy-fields, or are walled and made into towns, armed, forbidding. The lowlands below them are also dammed from the sea tides, and in those places not suitablefor rice are salt pans, where the sea is evaporated for its salt.
The men that live on the Bay of Tai Wan have no settled occupation. They are farmers when the time comes to sow rice and to harvest it; they are fishermen, who know the bed of the sea; smugglers in their peaceful moods, but pirates always, and months are few when their mountains do not resound with the noise of combat; when the brown surge of the bay is without loitering spars, or dead or wreckage.
The secrets of this turbulent place, the fights fought there; the deeds of valour; the hopes and the end of hopes—gone down in its depths are without number. To look upon its waters is to shudder; to live there is to fear neither God nor His judgment; to go there requires the courage of a child, so the bishop had sent the Breton.
The priest, leaving Yingching at daybreak, sent no word to the wife, but went away happy in that nameless credulity, which belongs ordinarily to neither man nor woman, but only to children or such as he. And yet the Breton was not to blame, for happiness was the cause of it. Many weeks had already passed since the wife had opened the wicket and had come down to sit beside him—weeks that had vanished with the brevity of a dream.
Each day she fluttered for a moment on thethreshold, then came down and seated herself near him; but it always remained as the first day, a vision, a tremor, a silence. The wife sat with her back to him, and not often did the Breton dare to raise his eyes nor even glance furtively at the beautiful contour of her neck and shoulders, nor at the delicate bloom that crept back from her cheek. But sometimes there was a quick turning of her head, a flash of light—then he trembled.
The happiness of all this nearness, stillness, and flashes brought about no change in the outward demeanour of the Breton. There is but little difference in appearance of a torrent at half flood and nearly at full flood. Only the beginnings and what ensues from it are noticed. The flood was still rising, and when the Breton was sent by the bishop to the wild Bay of Tai Wan, he left as he had remained during the past weeks, dreaming, without smiles, joyous, silent.
The priest’s journey was distant, and his stay among these turbulent sea-dwellers had been long; but he had much to do to keep him busy; much to remember and dream about, which kept him happy.
The people had received him with scowls, suspicion, and threats. In the market place of Hsia Wan a rock thrown at him struck a boy hooting by his side. He dressed the wound. Crossing a narrow islet to the village of Yat Ho, his boat was purposely overturned; without a word ofremonstrance or show of concern, he paid the boatman and went on his way. At midnight he passed through the tiger-infested woods of Foshui and Sanshu from Tai Po to the hut of the fisher. In this way it was not long before his dreaminess was construed into fearlessness and admired by those amphibious bandits of the bay. And whomever a Chinese pirate admires men should stand in awe of or look upon him as a child.
The Breton went about his duties without cessation except at dusk, and then, when those about him had ceased their labours, he would seek the solitude of the sea-bank as he had that of the river. It is doubtful if he perceived that instead of the great city with its lessening but varied noises there were behind him mountains down whose desolate sides came gloom instead of twilight, while the only sounds that rose from them were the bark of jackal and scream of night-bird. Not after the hour of sundown were to be heard at all the hard noises of labour, nor the wild mutter of these sea-dwellers in their daily life. When the evening guns had boomed from the walls of their villages and from their low long boats at anchorage had come the last roll of kettle-drum, the clash of cymbals, and burst of crackers, a deep silence brooded over all except cries from the mountains and the sea’s muffled splash.
As dusk deepens this Bay of Tai Wan takes ona terror of its own. By day its waters are a reddish-brown, and its wave-crests look like yellow floss; by night it is black, and its wave-crests flashes of fire. This strange phenomenon is due to the fact that the sea along this coast teems with phosphorescent protozoa, making it a red-brown by day, and when night falls there is seen in every movement of the waters a glint of green fire. Wave-crests moving shoreward are as an endless flight of monstrous fire-flies. Where the sea breaks on the wash and rocks the spray becomes a shower of green sparks, so that the shore-line burns with a cold, livid fire. Among the flame-crests are seen zig-zag lines—the fiery trace of shark fins. Sometimes a green coal glows in the blackness, a tortoise floating in the break of the sea; sometimes a swarm of flying fishes rise from the waves, their scales and membranous wings adrift with a green fire, and for a moment their flight is ghastly. Looking down the edge of a cliff the shallow sea is filled with monsters aflame. Man never witnessed a more horrible sight than the sea at Tai Wan by night. Nothing that moves escapes the clinging protozoa: fish darting through the blackness have every scale, spine, maw, and tooth covered with this ghastly glow; the hairy legs and bodies of sea-spiders, their protruding eyes and fangs glitter in frightful luminosity; gleaming snakes glance through the depths. Squids sometimeshide their fire-covered bodies in a black vomit, but crustacea, sea-toads, and larvæ all burning in this livid fire wriggle about under the black waters.
It was over this sea that the Breton dreamed and was joyous; it was by this sea that he buried the derelict whose chain and Seal he wore under his robe—a promise to the dead, but in due time to be more precious to him than all the jewels that have bedecked men, and more powerful than Empires.
The Breton once more stood before the screen, eager, hesitant; straining his ears for the music of a silken rustle; his eyes for one pink finger-tip. He waited a long time, but heard nothing, nor saw even one little finger resting shyly in a crevice.
“What, you here?”
He raised his eyes joyously.
“Well?”
“I have come back,” his words were almost inaudible.
“Indeed!”
He looked down happily.
“How did you happen to return? Did I send for you?” The voice of the wife was cold, vibrant.
The Breton’s eyes wandered contentedly from crevice to crevice.
“Sit down!” she petulantly commanded.
There was silence.
“Where have you been?”
“To the Bay of Tai Wan.”
“Why did you go?”
The Breton, discovering in the crevice a little finger, did not answer.
“Oh, very well! I suppose you were glad. It must have been a great relief. I was getting tired.”
Heedlessly the Breton heard the stamp of her foot and contentedly waited, though no sound was heard but its restless, impatient tapping.
“Why did you go away?”
“I buried a man——”
“Did that take you all these weeks?”
“No—but——”
“Priest!” she interrupted impatiently, “don’t give me excuses! Those veiling rags under which men hide their scared swarm of sins! Bah!”
He looked happily expectant at the crevices just over his head.
“Oh, well, it is immaterial,” she continued coldly, carelessly; “you are only my instructor. Come and go when you please. I have sought your learning, not you.” Her foot tapped measuredly. “Learning satisfies every craving of the heart, man—nothing. Learning is steadfast; a friend, who coaxes away the weariness of hours, hueingdull days with treasures from forgotten time, a wealth from the ends of the earth. It has a hundred attributes; man—not one. It is a cloak for chilled age, a balm for pain, an ointment for misfortune, and man—Oyah!”
The Breton thumbed contentedly the leaves of his book.
Presently the tapping of her foot ceased. He heard the soft, sensual rustle of her garments, then the wicket opened.
The pink had gone out of the wife’s cheeks; her face was pallid and her long lustrous eyes looked larger yet from the darkness that was under them.
The Breton glanced furtively at her as she came down and sat with her back to him.
“I am——” he ventured, uncertain.
“Yes?” she drawled, turning her head slightly toward him.
“I have thought about it.”
“Indeed!”
“Have I——”
“Oh, yes,” she interrupted coldly, “your teaching has been quite delightful; so learned.”
“I was away a long time.”
“Yes?”
“I hastened back.”
“On account of my studies, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he apologised.
“How thoughtful of you!”
“I could not——”
“Oh—it did not matter. No doubt if it had not been for the lessons you would not have come.”
Something in her tone made him look furtively at the pale altered contour of her cheek.
“Of course not!” she exclaimed vexedly. “How could I ask such a thing! It would be very annoying were it not for the instruction!”
“I enjoy——”
“Oh, you do! Don’t you suppose I know that? Instruct! Instruct! Instruct! I am tired of it!”
“You——”
“No, I don’t!” she interrupted savagely. “What is the good of all this learning, all these black books? Who loves me any more for it? Does it add a dearer pink to my cheek?” She turned her face partly toward him and in her voice was a wave of pain. “Do you think it gives lustre to my eye or music to my words?” Her tones became mocking. “Do you really think it will puff away wrinkles? A cosmetic, a tire-woman, a——” She stamped her foot peevishly. “I tell you, priest, I will have no more of it, never!”
“Learning enlightens,” said the Breton aimlessly, “as a mirror——”
“Oyah! A mirror! So is a tub of water holding the image of the sun, but what warmth comes from that reflection? I would like you to tell me, priest, with all your learning, what there is substantialin a reflected image? What if learning were the painting of the world’s ocean acts, could fish dwell in its mock waters? And I would like to know if there is the fragrance of one rose in ten myriad miles of embroidered flowers?”
He did not reply, and again came the half-kindly truce of silence, but only half, for there was still the tapping of her foot. And how varied is that speech! What a world of meaning is in the tapping of a woman’s foot! So the Breton listened, wonderingly to the thoughts that came from the tap, tap, tap on the marble floor.
“Did you study?” he ventured hesitatingly.
“Oh, yes,” she responded with mock carelessness, “and I learned many things.”
“Yes,” she added bitterly, “many things; and in the first place, I learned that learning is like dragging the sea for the jewels of night. I also learned that a brilliant cloud is easily scattered and that the fairest sunrise fades the soonest. Moreover,” she continued with increasing bitterness, “I have learned that trees blown away by passing winds have more branches than——” She stopped. A tremor in her voice was mastering her. Again came the tapping of her foot: petulant, impatient, then slower, softer and more uncertain.
“But why should I grieve?” She communed to herself, her voice full of weariness, filled with the quiver of hopeless pain. “No one cares for me, noone ever thinks of me caged here forever in this cold, gilded chamber, while they move far and wide, gay travellers on the many rivers of life. Now and then one stops and with a small laugh drops a crumb between my bars and passes on. They loiter through the world’s flower-gardens, and I—sometimes there comes swiftly past a whiff of perfume. They drain deep the different wines of pleasure, while into my tiny cup, bar-fastened, is poured a few drops of water. They move abroad under the broad sunlight, and I—moveless in this wee shadow. They hear ever that great symphony, the world’s laugh, and I—no one ever laughs alone. Their cheeks are stained by the dews of an hundred skies, mine—by tears. They sleep that they might hasten the morrow, and I—to forget to-day. They weave and I untangle. Their threads are of a hundred hues, mine—one sad colour. Untangling! Untangling! And when will it all end? To-day is yesterday; yesterday as days gone; to-morrow—oh, if I only did not know! If I only——”
She burst into tears.
The Breton’s lips parted, his eyes grew round. Presently he began to realise that she was sobbing almost at his feet. His hands tightened their clasp on the arms of the chair and a pallor came into his face. It was difficult for him to recognise this bitter, passionate outburst in the very joy of hisreturn. He never before had seen a woman sob, and during all of the months they had been together he had only known her in careless, exuberant happiness, a joyousness almost divine. Now crying so heart-brokenly before him, she appeared as someone else. Grief in her was more than paradoxical—it was laughter weeping, it was the sobbing of song.
The tears of the wife did not ebb as tears often do but each sob seemed to gain greater force from the one gone before. Her face was half hid in her little hands, her wide sleeves had fallen away and her tears trickling down her bare arms fell two jewelled streams into her lap.
The Breton sat rigid in his chair watching her slight form shake with each convulsive sob but he said nothing, did nothing; not even his eyes moved.
At times her crying ceased; there was a moment of questioned silence, then her tears fell faster and despair crept into her sobs.
It was during one of these choked, silent hesitancies that the priest mumbled:
“Your husband loves you——”
She straightened up. Her hands still over her eyes and a sob trembling on her lips.
“Your husband loves you,” repeated the Breton monotonously. “Your husband——”
She stamped her foot and fell again to weeping.
The Breton moved uneasily. A tenseness came into the lines about his mouth.
“Your husband——”
“What do you know about love?” she demanded in the midst of her sobs.
And presently the priest said: “It is something from God.”
“Yes!” she drawled with mocking, scornful bitterness. “Indeed! Why, I thought it was just a violet thrown in a rocky waste; a sunbeam cast upon the cold sea; dew dropped into the desert; a bundle of burnt prayers tossed upon the wind; a—a——” She choked, turned her face away and again tears gathered on her lashes.
Presently she began to sob softly, full of pain.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
Her tears flowed faster.
“Don’t,” he begged again.
“You—don’t—care!” she sobbed.
The Breton did not reply.
“I—know—you don’t.”
The Breton’s lips moved, but he said nothing.
“You—you——”
“Don’t.”
“I wish—I were dead——”
“No!”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded fiercely. “One is better dead than one’s heart strangled by this silken scarf. Why must one live forever onthis desert, scanning each day the sky-line for what cannot come?”
She picked restlessly the folds of her robe, her tears falling upon her unrestful hands.
“You would not care,” she continued hopelessly. “You never even asked if I had been sick, and yet I come before you all white with troubled pallor——”
“You——”
“Oh, no!” she interrupted, scornfully, turning her head and glancing coldly at him. “I have been more than well and happy. Why—I have laughed and sung each hour of the day away; no bird in all the park has been gayer than I, and my cheeks? Oh, I whitened them; they became so ruddy. Oh, yes, how happy, how happy——”
She was looking at the Breton, pleading, tearful.
“Don’t you know,” she begged, “don’t you know that I have not laughed nor sung all these weeks? No caged bird ever—ever—I think you would have cared if you could have seen me cowering now in one corner, now in another; counting the moments for the coming of day, then longing for night. And oh, how ill I have been; now burning with fever, then cold, chilling. I did not know what had happened: one little thought parching my lips, making my heart shrink and draw high into my throat. A noise like a footfall would make it beat so painfully I could not breathe, andwhen I heard someone coming, I trembled all over. I grew feverish, then cold, a dimness would come over my eyes. All day and night I cried for tardy sleep—and when one begs for sleep is it not a wish for death? Oh, if you only knew,” she cried, striking the palms of her little hands passionately together. “If you only knew!” She rose from her stool and stood looking at him.
The Breton stood up, as she came close to him, her hands clasped on her breast, her eyes questioning, beseeching. He looked down at her for a moment, then raising his head, closed his eyes.
She stepped nearer, quivering, hesitant.
“Tell me you will not go away again.”
The Breton did not answer.
“Tell me,” she whispered, moving closer so that their robes touched and she felt him tremble.
Through the open windows came the grumble of the surrounding city. All else was still; the birds in the cages above them and the birds in the park without. Man was yet in the midst of his toil and Nature still somnolent in the afternoon heat.
“Promise me?” She lifted her clasped hands and rested them lightly on his bosom.
The thrushes in the bamboo cages above them began to flutter, and in the park the calling of pheasants was heard. With the breath of evening larks, pehlings, birds of a hundred spirits cameforth from their hidings. The hum of the city grew less and less.
Neither had moved.
The shadow of the feathery bamboo that grew by the fish-pond without came softly in through the open shell-latticed window; furtively it crept across the floor, slowly it ascended the lacquered wall and—vanished.
After a while the sun’s rays were gone and a yellow light diffused through the room, burnished anew its golden fretwork. An orange-saffron glimmer lingered for a few moments, then came the fleeting rose blush of twilight, caressingly tinging the paled faces of the Breton and the wife standing so still and so silent in its parting light.
Gently as silken floss is wafted upward by a breath so the little hands of the wife stole from the Breton’s bosom to his shoulders.
And when the songs of the birds in the park had ceased; when only the quarrelling of the white-headed crows was heard; when the hum from the city had died away; when silence with dusk had closed around them the hands of the wife crept lightly around the Breton’s neck. Her lips parted, her eyes, tearful, yet happy, looked up into his face.
Dusk deepened.
Heavily the Breton lifted his hands, resting them gently but firmly upon her arms.
A joyous flush spread over her face and neck; her lips quivered as if to smile or burst into joyful tears; she laid her cheek lightly on his bosom. The Breton’s fingers closed around her wrists; trembling, with difficulty he took them from his shoulders.
Gently he put her away from him and as he crossed the room he heard a little moan, also the crinkling fall of silk.