BOOK I. AFIELD (continued 2)

Luban laughed feebly at last, and Fallows looked up to him.

“You’ll hear him in your passing, Luban, poor lad. You’ll hear him in your hell. Until you are as simple and as pure as this Ploughman—you shall hear and see all this again. Though you should hang by the neck to-night, Luban,—this picture would go out with you. For this is the hour you killed your Christ.”

12

Lowenkampf was the name that meant defeat. Lowenkampf—it was like the rain that night.... “Lowenkampf started out too soon.”... Morning heard it. Fallows heard it. The coughing sentries heard it. The whole dismal swamp of drenched, whipped soldiery heard it. Sleek History had awakened to grasp it; Kuropatkin had washed his hands.... Lowenkampf had started out too soon that morning. The Siberians had only left Yentai Station proper when Lowenkampf set forth from the Coal-heights. Had his supports been in position (very quickly and clearly the world’s war-experts would see this) the rout in the grain would have been checked.

As it was, many of Lowenkampf’s soldiers had run the entire ten miles from the heights to the station, Yentai—after emerging from kao-liang—evading the Siberian supports as they ran, as chaos flies from order. Now in the darkness (with Kuroki bivouacked upon the main trophy of the day, the Coal-heights) the shamed battalions of Lowenkampf re-formed along the main line in the midst of their unused reserves.

The day had been like a month of fever to Morning, but Duke Fallows was a younger man, and a stranger that night.... Morning tried to work, but he was too close to it all, too tired. It was as if he were trying to tell of a misfortune that had no beginning, and whose every phase was his own heart’s concern. His weariness was like the beginning of death—coldness and pervading ennui. Against his will he was gathered in the glowing currents of Duke Fallows—watching, listening, not pretending even to understand, but borne along. Together they went in to the General’s private room. Lowenkampf looked up, gathered himself with difficulty and smiled. Fallows turned to Morning, asked him to stand by the door, then strode forward and knelt by the General’s knees. It did not seem extraordinary to Morning—so much was insane.

“You were chosen, old friend. It has been a big day for the under-dog——”

“I have lost Liaoyang.”

“That was written.”

“My little boy will hear it in the street. He will hear it in the school. Before he is a man—he will hear it.”

“I shall take him upon my knee. I shall tell him of you in a way that he shall never forget. And his mother—I shall tell her——”

Lowenkampf rubbed his eyes.

“I have business in Russia. This day I heard what must be done. It is almost as if I had gotten to be a man.”

Fallows leaned back laughingly, his arms extended, as if pushing the other’s knees from him.

Some inner wall broke, and the General wept. Morning put his foot against the door. The thought in his heart was: “This is something I cannot write.”...

Morning held the idea coldly now that Fallows was mentally softened from the strain. Other things came up to support it.... He, too, had seen a soldier shot by an officer. It was discipline. At best, it was but one of the thousand pictures. It had happened less because the man was retiring without a wound—thousands were doing that—than because the man answered back, when the officer spoke. He did not hear what the soldier said. This soldier possibly had trans-Baikal children, too. The day and his long illness had crazed Fallows, now at the knees of the man who had lost the battle.

“... I know what you thought this morning—when you saw your men march down into the grain,” Fallows was saying to the General. “You thought of your little boy and his mother. You thought of the babes and wives and mothers—of those soldiers of yours whom you were sending to the front. You didn’t want to send them out. You’re too close to becoming a man for that. You wondered if you would not have to suffer for sending them out so—and if this particular suffering would not have to do with your little boy and his mother——”

“My God, stop, Fallows——”

“You had to think that. You wouldn’t be Lowenkampf if you failed to think that.... I love you for it, old friend. Big things will come from Lowenkampf, and from the conscript who came to me out of the grain with vision and a voice. The battle at home won’t be so hard to win—now that this is lost.”

There was a challenge and heavy steps on the platform—and one low, hurried voice.

Lowenkampf stood up and wiped his eyes.

“The Commander——” he whispered.

A pair of captains towered above him, a grizzled colonel behind; then Morning saw the gray of the short beard, and the dark, dry-burning of unblinking eyes, fixed upon Lowenkampf.... The latter’s shoulders drooped a little, and his eyes lowered deprecatingly for just an instant. Kuropatkin passed in. The soft fullness of his shoulders was like a woman’s. Fleshly and failing, he looked, from behind.... The Americans waited outside with the colonel and captains. The door was shut.

Midnight.... Fallows and Morning had moved in the rain among the different commands. The army at Yentai seemed to be emerging from prolonged anæsthesia to find itself missing in part and strangely disordered. It was afraid to sleep, afraid to think of itself, and denied drink. Fallows had told everywhere the story of the Ploughman; just now he helped himself to a bundle of Morning’s Chinese parchment, and was writing copy in long-hand.

His head was bowed, his eyes expressionless.

“And I alone remain to tell thee!” he muttered at last.

Morning did not answer, but resigned himself to hear more of the Messiah who came out of the grain.

“I told one of Mergenthaler’s aides the story,” Fallows said coldly. “He said it was quite the proper thing to do—to shoot down a man who was leaving the field unwounded. I told Manlewson of the First Siberians, who replied that the Russians would begin to win battles when they murdered all such, as unflinchingly and instantly as the Japanese did, and hospital malingerers as well. I told Bibinoff (who is Luban’s captain), and he said: ‘That’s the first good thing I ever heard about Luban.’ He was pleased and epigrammatic....”

Fallows stood up—his face was in shadow, so far beneath was the odorous lamp.

“Living God—I can’t make them see—I can’t make them see! They’re all enchanted. Or else I’m dead and this is hell.... They talk about Country. They talk about making a man stand in a place of sure death for his Country—in this Twentieth Century—when war has lost its last vestige of meaning to the man in the ranks, and his Country is a thing of rottenness and moral desolation! What is the Country to the man in the ranks? A group of corrupt, inbred undermen who study to sate themselves—to tickle and soften themselves—with the property and blood and slavery of the poor.... A good man, a clean man, is torn from his house to fight, to stand in the fire-pits and die for such monsters. Suddenly the poor man sees!

“... He came forth from the grain with vision—smiling and unafraid. He is not afraid to fight, but he has found himself on the wrong side of the battle. When he fights again it will be for his child, for his house, for his brother, for his woman, for his soul. Blood in plenty has he for such a war.... Think of it, John Morning, the Empire was entrusted to poor little Luban—against this man of vision! He came forth smiling from the grain. ‘I do not belong here, my masters. I was torn away from my woman and children, and I must be home for the winter ploughing. It is a long way—and I must be off. I am a ploughman, not a soldier. I belong to my children and my field. My country does not plough my field—does not feed my children.... What could Luban do but kill him—little agent of Herod? But the starry child lives!...

“And listen, John, to-night—you heard them—we heard these fat-necked, vulture-breasted commanders—vain, envy-poisoned, scandal-mongering commanders, complaining to each other: ‘See, what stuff has been given us to win battles with!... I have told it and they cannot see. They are not even good devils; they are not decent devourers. They have no humor—that is their deadly sin. An adult, half-human murderer, seeing his soldiers leave the field, would cry aloud, ‘Hello, you Innocents—so you have wakened up at last!’ But these cannot see. Their eyes are stuck together. It is their deadly sin—the sin against the Holy Ghost—to lack humor to this extent!”

Morning laughed strangely. “Come on to bed, you old anarchist,” he said, though sleep was far from his own eyes.

“That’s it, John. Anarchy. In the name of Fatherland, Russia murders a hundred thousand workmen out here in Asia. In answer, a few men and women gather together in a Petersburg cellar, saying, ‘We are fools, not heroes. When we fight again it will be for Our Country!’ And they are anarchists—their cause is Terrorism!”

“We’re all shot to pieces to-night, Duke——”

“We are alive, John. Lowenkampf is alive. But he who spoke to me this day, who came forth so blithely to die in my arms (his woman sleeps ill to-night in the midst of her babes), and he is lying out in the rain, his face turned up to the rain. God damn the fat reptile that calls itself Fatherland!... But, I say to you, that we’re come nearly to the end of the prince and pauper business on this planet. The soul of the Ploughman was heard to-day—as long ago they heard the Soul of the Carpenter.... He is lying out there in the millet—his face turned up to the rain. Yet I say to you, John, there’s more life in him this hour than in his Tsar and all the princes of the blood.”

Fallows covered his face with his hands.

“You’re tired and thick to-night, John, but you are one who must see!” he finished passionately. “You must help me tell the story to the cellar gatherings in Petersburg, to the secret meetings in all the centers of misery, wherever a few are gathered together in the name of Brotherhood—in New York, London, Paris, and Berlin.... You must help me to make other men see—help me to tell this thing so that the world will hear it, and with such power that the world will be unable longer to lie to itself.

“I can see it now—how Jesus, the Christ, tried to make men see.... That was His Gethsemane—that He could not make men see. I tell you it is a God’s work—and it came to Jesus, the Christ, at last—‘If they crucify me, perhaps, a few will see!’... I’m going over to Russia, John, to learn how to tell them better.”

13

The night of the third of September, and John Morning is off for the big adventure. Between the hills, the roads are a-stream.... All day he had watched different phases of the retreat. Fighting back in the city; fighting here and there along the staggering, burdened, cruelly-punished line; a sudden breaking-out of fighting in a dozen places like hidden fires; rain and wounded and seas of mud; the gray intolerable misery of it all; the sick and the dead—Morning was glutted with the colossal derangement. And they called it an orderly retreat.

He was riding the sorrel Eve out of the zone of war. The battle was behind him now, and he breathed the world again. He had something to tell. Liaoyang was in his brain. He was off for the ships that sail. A month—America—the great story.... He felt the manuscript against him. It was in a Chinese belt, with money for the passage home, tight against his body, a hundred thousand words done on Chinese parchment and wrapped in oil-skin. The book of Liaoyang—he had earned it. He had written it against the warping cynicism of Duke Fallows. On the ship he could reshape and renew it all into a master-picture.

It had been easier than he thought to break away from Fallows, his friend. The latter was whelmed in the soul of the Ploughman. A big story, of course, as Fallows saw it—but there were scores of big stories. It would ruin it to let an anarchist tell it. Suppose officers in general did stop to listen to troops sneaking off the field?

Duke had given him a letter, and a story for the Western States. The first was not to be read until he was at sea out from Japan. When Morning spoke of the money he owed, the other had put the thought away. Sometime he would call for it if he needed it; it was a trifle anyway.... It hadn’t been a trifle. It had meant everything.

Morning was glad to breathe himself again. Yet there was an ache in his heart for Duke Fallows, now off for Europe the western way. He, Morning, had not done his part. He hadn’t given as he had taken; had not kept close to Duke Fallows at the last. There was a big score that money could never settle. Soundly glad to be alone, but in the very gladness the picture of Duke Fallows returned—lying on his back, in bunks and berths and beds, staring up at the ceiling, accentuating his own failures to bring out the hopeful and valorous parts of his friend. It was always such a picture to Morning, when Fallows came to mind—staring, dreaming, looking up from his back. It had seemed sometimes as if he were trying to make of his friend all that he had failed to be.... Yet the Duke Fallows of the last twenty-four hours, wild, dithyrambic—had been too much.... Again and again, irked and heavy with his own limitations, Morning’s brain had seized upon the weakness of the other, to condone his own slowness of understanding.... It may have been Eve, and her relation to the Fallows revelation, or it may have been putting hideous militarism behind, that made John Morning think of Women now as he rode, and a little differently from ever before.... Certain laughing sentences of Duke Fallows came back to him presently, with a point he seemed to have missed when they were uttered:

“We have our devils, John. You have ambition; Lowenkampf has drink; Mergenthaler has slaughter.... You will love a woman; you already drink too readily, but Ambition will stand in your house and fight from room to room at the last—and over the premises to the last ditch. He’s a grand devil—is Ambition.... My devil, John? Well, it isn’t the big-jawed male who loves a woman as she dreams to be loved. It’s the man with a touch of women in him—just enough to begin upon her mystery.... When I hear a certain woman’s voice, or see a certain passing figure—something old, very old and wise, stirs within, seems to stir and thrill with eternal life. And, John, it isn’t low—the thought. I’d tell you if it were. It isn’t low. It’s as regal as Mother Nature in a valley, on a long afternoon. It isn’t that I want to hurt her; it isn’t that I want something she has. Rather, I want all she has! I want her mind; I want her soul; I want her full animations. I want to make her yield and give; I want to feel her battle with herself, not to yield and give.... Oh, the flesh is nothing. It is the cheapest thing in the world—but her giving, her yielding—it’s like an ocean tide. It breaks every bond; it laughs at every law. Power seems to rush into a woman when she yields! That’s the conquest of my heart—to feel that power.... All devils are young compared to that in a man’s heart—all but one, and that is the passion to hold spiritual dominion over other men.”

Morning’s mind had fallen into the habit of allowing much for the other’s sayings—of accepting much as mere facility.... Thus he thought as he traveled in the rain, Eve’s swift, springy trot a stimulus to deep thinking; and always there was a bigger and finer John Morning shadowing him, fathoming his smallnesses, wondering at his puny rebellions and vain desires. It was in this fairer John Morning, so tragically unexpressed during the past few months, that the pang lived—the pang of parting from his friend.

Morning was terrific physically. The thing he was now doing was as spectacular a bit of newspaper service as ever correspondent undertook in Asia; and yet, to John Morning the high light of achievement fell upon the manuscript, not upon the action. It had not occurred to him to be afraid. If he could get across the ninety miles to Koupangtse—through the Hun huises, through the Japanese scouting cavalry, across two large and many smaller yellow rivers—and reach the railroad, he would quickly get a ship for Japan from Tientsin or Tongu—and from Japan—home.... He was doing it for himself—passionately and with no sense of splendor.

Fallows had been so sure of his friend’s physical courage, that he made no point of it, in the expression of attachment.... He had called it vision at first, this thing that had drawn him to John Morning—a touch of the poet, a touch of the feminine—others might have called it. No matter the name, he had seen it, as all artists of the expression of the inner life recognize it in one another; and Fallows knew well that where the courage of the soldier ends, the courage of the visionary begins.

Morning was a trifle peculiar, however. Unless it sank utterly, he stuck to a ship, until the horizon revealed another sail.

He had come up through the dark. The world had grounded him deeply in illusion. Most brilliant of promises—even Fallows had not seen him that first day in too bright a dawn—but he learned hard. And his had been close fighting—such desperate fighting that one does not hear voices, and one is too deep in the ruck to see the open distance.... Much as he had been alone—the world had invariably shattered his silences. Always he had worked—worked, worked furiously, angrily, for himself.... He was taught so. The world had caught him as a child in his brief, pitiful tenderness. The world was his Eli. As from sleep, he had heard Reality calling. He had risen to answer, but the false Eli had spoken—an Eli that did not teach him truly to listen, nor to say, when he heard the Voice another time—“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

14

The Taitse, of large and ancient establishment, runs westward from Liaoyang for twenty-five miles, and in a well-earned bed, portions of which are worn in the rock. Morning rode along the north bank, thus avoiding altogether a crossing of the Taitse, since his journey continued westward from the point where the river took its southward bend. From thence it paralleled the Hun in a race to join the Liao. The main stem of the latter was beyond the Hun, and these two arteries of Asia broke Morning’s trail. Fording streams of such magnitude was out of the question, and there was a strong chance of an encounter with the Hun huises at the ferries....

Rain, and the sorrel’s round hoofs sucked sharply in the clay. She had no shoes to lose in these drawing vacuums. The scent of her came up warm and good to the horse-lover. Alone on a road, she had always been manageable, hating crowds and noise—soldiers, Chinese, and accoutrements. Perhaps, this was merely a biding of time. Eve had a fine sense of keeping a strange road. This was not usual, although a horse travels a familiar road in the darkness better than a man. These two worked well together.

By map the distance from Liaoyang to Koupangtse was seventy miles. Morning counted upon ninety, at least. The Manchurian roads are old and odd as the Oriental mind.... He passed the southward bend of the big river, and at daybreak reached Chiensen, ten miles beyond, on the Hun.

Chiensen, unavoidable on account of the ferry, was a danger-point. Japanese cavalry, it was reported, frequently lit there, and the Hun huises (Chinese river-pirates and thieves in general, whom Alexieff designated well as “the scourge of Manchuria”) were at base in this village.... In the gray he found junks, a flat tow and landing.

You never know what Chinese John is going to do. If you have but little ground of language between you, he will take his own way, on the pretext of misunderstanding. Morning’s idea was to get across quickly, without arousing the river-front. He awoke the ferryman, placing three silver taels in his hand. (He carried silver, enough native currency to get him to Japan, his passport, and the two large envelopes Duke Fallows had given him, in the hip-pockets of his riding breeches.) The ferryman had no thought of making the first crossing without tea. Morning labored with him, and with seeming effect for a moment, but the other fell suddenly from grace and aroused his family. He was not delicate about it. Morning resigned himself to the delay, and was firmly persuading Eve to be moderate, as she drank from the river’s edge, when Chinese John suddenly aroused the river population. Standing well out on the tow-flat, he trumpeted at some comrade of the night before, apparently no less than a hundred yards up the river. There were sleepy answers from many junks within range of the voice. It was the one hateful thing to John Morning—yet to rough it with the ferryman for his point of view would be the only thing worse.

The landing was rickety; its jointure with the tow-boat imperfect. The American took off his coat, tossed it over the sorrel’s head, tying the sleeves under her throat. She stiffened in rebellion, but as the darkness was as yet little broken by the day, she decided to accept the situation. Morning felt her growing reluctance, however, as she traversed the creaking, springy boards. The crevasse between the landing and the craft was bridged; and the latter, grounded on the shore-side, did not give. The mare stood in the center of the tow, sweating and tense.

Numerous Chinese were now abroad—eager, even insistent, to help. Their voices stirred the mare to her old red-eyed insanity. Morning could hold himself no longer. Once or twice before in his life this hard, bright light had come to his brain. Though the exterior light was imperfect, the ferryman saw the fingers close upon the butt of the gun, and something of the American’s look. He dropped his tea, sprang to the junk and pulled up the bamboo-sail. This was used to hold the tow against the current.

Two natives in the flat-boat stood ready with poles. And now the ferryman spoke in a surprised and disappointed way as he toiled in front. He seemed ready to burst into tears; and the two nearer Morning grunted in majors and minors, according to temperament. The American considered that it might all be innocent, although the voices were many from the town-front. Poling began; the tow drew off from the landing. Clear from the grounding of the shore, the craft sank windily to its balance in the stream.

This was too much for Eve. Her devil was in the empty saddle. She leaped up pawing. The two Chinese at the poles dived over side abruptly. Water splashed Eve’s flanks, and she veered about on her hind feet—blinded and striking the air in front. The wobble of the tow now finished her frenzy—and back she went into the stream. The saddle saved her spine from a gash on the edge of the tow. Morning had this thought when Eve arose; that he need fear no treachery from the Chinese; and this as she fell—a queer, cool, laughing thought—that after such a fall she would never walk like a man again.

He had been forced to drop the bridle, but caught it luckily with one of the poles as she came up struggling. He beckoned the ferryman forward, and Eve, swimming and fighting, was towed across. To Morning it was like one of his adventures back in the days of the race-horse shipping.

Eve struck the opposite bank—half-strangled from her struggle and the blind. The day had come. The nameless little town on this side of the Hun was out to meet him. Had he brought a Korean tiger by a string, however, he could not have enjoyed more space—as the mare climbed from the stream. He talked to her and unbound her eyes. Red and deeply baleful they were. She shook her head and parted her jaws. The circle of natives widened. Morning straightened the saddle and patted Eve’s neck softly, talking modestly of her exploit.... Natives were now hailing from mid-stream, so he leaped into the sticky saddle and guided the mare out to the main road leading to Tawan on the Liao.... Queerly enough, just at this instant, he remembered the hands and the lips of the ferryman—a leper.

Ten miles on the map—he could count thirteen by the road—and then the Liao crossing.... The mare pounded on until they came to a wild hollow, rock-strewn, among deserted hills. Morning drew up, cooled his mount and fed the soaked grain strapped to the saddle since the night before. Eve was not too cross to eat—nor too tired. She lifted her head often and drew in the air with the sound of a bubble-pipe.... Just now Morning noted a wrinkle in his saddle blanket. Hot with dread, he loosed the girth.

He looked around in terror lest anyone see his own shame and fear. He had put the saddle on in the dark, but passed his hand between her back and the cloth. Long ago a trainer had whipped him for a bad bit of saddling; even at the time he had felt the whipping deserved. He lifted the saddle. A pink scalded mouth the size of a twenty-five-cent piece was there.... God, if he could only be whipped now. She was sensitive as satin; it was only a little wrinkle of the rain-soaked blanket.... His voice whimpered as he spoke to her.

Only a horseman could have suffered so. He washed the rub, packed soft lint from a Russian first-aid bandage about to ease the pressure; and then, since the rain had stopped again, he rubbed her dry and walked at her head for hours, despairing at last of the town named Tawan. The Liao was visible before the village itself. Morning shook with fatigue. He had to gain the saddle for the possible need of swift action, but the wound beneath never left his mind. It uncentered his self-confidence—a force badly needed now.

And this was the Liao—the last big river, roughly half-way. The end of the war-zone, it was, too, but the bright point of peril from Hun huises.... Morning saw the thin masts of the river junks over the bowl of the hill, their tribute flags flying.... To pass was the day’s work, to make the ferry with Eve. There was too much misery and contrition in his heart for him to handle her roughly. The blind could not be used again. She would connect that with the back-fall into the Hun. The town was full of voices.

15

Chinese were gathering. Morning went about his business as if all were well, but nothing was good to him about the increase of these hard, quick-handed men. They were almost like Japanese. With the tail of his eye, he saw shirt signals across the river. The main junk fleet was opposite. Trouble—he knew it. The hard, bright light was in his brain.

In the gathering of the natives, Eve was roused afresh. His only way was to try her without the blind. If she showed fight, he meant to mount quickly and ride back through the crowd for one of the lower-town crossings.

Without looking back, he led the way to the landing, holding just the weight of the bridle-rein. His arm gave with her every hesitation. To his amazement she consented to try. The tow-craft was larger here—enough for a bullock-pair and cart—and better fitted to the landing. Step by step she went with him to her place.

Now Morning saw that in using the blind the first time he had done her another injury. She would not have gone back into the Hun but for that. She awed him. Something Fallows had said recurred—about her being unconquerable, different every day. Also Fallows had said, “She will kill you at the last....”

He drove back the Chinese, all but two pole-men, that would have gathered on the tow. This was quietly done, but his inflexibility was felt. Many signals were sent across, as the tow receded from the shore, and numbers increased on the opposite bank.

Eve, breathing audibly, swung forward and back with the craft, as it gave to the river. The towing junk, as in the Hun, held the other against the current; the rest was poling and paddling.... The junk itself slipped out of the way as the tow was warped toward the landing. Other junks were stealing in.... Morning already had paid. He felt the girth of the saddle, fingered the bridle, tightened his belt. A warm, gray day, but he was spent and gaunt and cold. Eve was hushed—mulling her bit softly, trembling with hatred for the Chinese.

The road ascended from the river, through a narrow gorge with rocky walls. The river-men were woven across the way. While the tow was yet fifteen feet from the landing, Morning gained the saddle. The ferry-man gestured frantically that this had never been done before; that a man’s beast properly should be led across. Morning laughed, tightened his knees, and at an early instant loosened the bridle-rein, for the mare to jump. The heavy tow shot back as she cleared the fissure of stream.

Morning was now caught in the blur of events. The Chinese did not give way for the mare, as she trotted across the boards to the rocky shore. Up she went striking. Again he had not known Eve. The back-dive into the Hun had not cured her. She would walk like a man and pitch back into Hell—and do it again.... Someone knifed her from the side and she toppled.

The fall was swift and terrible, for the trail sloped behind. Morning’s instinct was truer than his brain, but there was no choice of way to jump. He could not push the mare from him completely to avoid the cliff. He was half-stunned against the wall, and not clear from the struggle of her fall. The brain is never able to report this instant afterward, even though consciousness is not lost. He was struck, trampled; he felt the cold of the rock against his breast, and the burn of a knife.

The Chinese struck at him as he rose. The mare was up, facing him, but dragging him upward, as a dog with a bone. His left hand found the pistol. He cleared the Chinese from him, emptying the chambers.... Eve let him come to her. He must have gained the saddle as she swung around in the narrow gorge to begin her run. The wind rushed coldly across his breast and abdomen. His shirt had been cut and pulled free. It was covered with blood. He tried to hold the mare, but either his strength was gone or she was past feeling the bit. It was her hour. All Morning could do was to keep the road.

He was all but knocked out. He had mounted as a fighter gets up under the count—and fights on without exactly knowing. The mare was running head down. He tried his strength again. The reins were rigid; she had the bit and meant to end the game.... He loved her wild heart; mourned for her; called her name; told her of wrongs he had done. Again and again, the light went from him; sometimes he drooped forward to her thin, short mane, and clung there, but the heat of her made him ill. They came into hills, passed tiny villages. It was all strange and terrible—a hurtling from high heaven.... Eve was like a furnace....

And now she was weaving on the road—running drunkenly, unless his eyes betrayed.... The rushing wind was cold upon his breast. His coat was gone; his shirt had been cut. He tried to pull the blood-soaked ends together. At this moment the blow fell.

These Chinese had been quick-handed, and they knew where to search for a man’s goods. He was coldly sane in an instant, for the rending of his whole nature; then came the quick zeal for death—the intolerableness of living an instant. The wallet—the big story—some hundreds of tales in paper! It was the passing of these from next his body that had left him cold.... Fury must have come to his arms. The mare lifted her head under his sudden attack.

Yes, he could manage her now. The bloody mouth and the blind-mad head came up to him—her front legs giving like a colt’s. Down they went together. Morning took his fall limply, with something of supremely organized indifference, and turned in the mud to the mare.

She was dead. The gray of pearl was in her eyes where red life had been.... No, she raised herself forward, seemed to be searching for him, her muzzle sickly relaxed. She could not stir behind. Holding there for a second—John Morning forgot the big story.

Eve fell again. He crawled to her—tried to lift her head. It was heavy as a sheet-anchor to his arms.... Her heart had broken. She had died on her feet—the last rising was but a galvanism.... He looked up into the gray sky where the clouds stirred sleepily. He wanted to ask something from something there.... He could not think of what he wanted.... Oh, yes, his book of Liaoyang.

And now his eye roved over the mare.... Her hind legs were sheeted with fresh blood and clotted with dry.... Desperately he craned about to see further. Entrails were protruding from a knife wound. The inner tissues were not cut, but the opened gash had let them sag horribly. She had run from Tawan with that wound.... He had worn her to the quick in night; blinded her for the Hun crossing, when she would have done nobly with eyes uncovered.... He had not been able to keep her from killing herself.... John Morning, the horseman.... He had left a gaping wound in the spirit of Duke Fallows.... All that he had done was failure and loss; all that he had planned so passionately, so brutally, indeed, that the needs and the offerings of others had not reached his heart, because of the iron self-purpose weighed there.

Luban, Lowenkampf, Mergenthaler, even the Commander-in-chief, looked strangely in through the darkened windows of his mind. The moral suffocation of the grain-fields surged over him again.... He caught a glimpse of that last moment in the ravine, but not the taking of the wallet.... Was it just a dream that a native leaped forward to grasp his stirrup, and that he leaned down to fire? He seemed to recall the altered brow.

The pictures came too fast. The sky did not change. The something did not answer.... Eve was lying in the mud. She looked darker and huddled. He kissed her face, and as he gained his feet, the thought came queerly that he might be dead, as she was. He held the thought of action to his limbs and made them move.

When he could think more clearly, he scorned the pain and protest of his limbs. He would not be less than Eve. If he were not dead, he would die straight up, and on the road to Koupangtse.

16

Thirty-six hours after Morning left Eve, an English correspondent at Shanhaikwan added the following to a long descriptive letter made up of refugee tales, and the edges and hearsay of the war-zone:

Night of Sept. 5.... An American whose name by passport is John Morning reached here to-night on the Chinese Eastern, having left Koupangtse this morning. According to his story, he was with the Russians, now in retreat from Liaoyang, on the night of Sept. 3, only forty-eight hours from this writing.

Morning was in an unconscious condition upon arrival. His passage had been fourth-class for the journey, and he was packed among the coolies and refugees on an open flat-car so crowded that all but the desperately fatigued had room only to stand. This white man had fallen to the floor of the car, among the bare feet of the surging Oriental crowd, beneath their foul garments.

... He was lifted forth from the car by the Chinese—a spectacle abjectly human, covered with filth; moreover, his body was incredibly bruised, his left puttee legging torn by a deep knife-wound that began at the knee, and traversed a distance of eight inches downward—the whole was gummed and black with blood; another knife-wound in his side was in an angry condition, and his clothing was stiffened from flow of it.

A few taels in paper and silver were found upon him; the passport, an unopened letter addressed to himself; also a manuscript addressed to a San Francisco paper, and to be delivered by John Morning. The natives reported that he had reached Koupangtse an hour before the arrival of the Chinese Eastern; had employed a native to buy him fourth-class passage, paying the native also to help him aboard. He had collapsed, however, until actually among the Chinese on the flat-car. He had tasted neither food nor drink during the long day’s journey, nor in Koupangtse during the wait. The natives affirm that he crawled part of the distance up to the railway station; and that there were no English or Americans there.

Upon reaching here, Morning was revived with stimulants, his wounds bathed and dressed, fresh clothing provided. His extraordinary vitality and courage indicate that he will overcome the shocks and exhaustion of a journey hardly paralleled anywhere, if his story be true. He asserts that he must be on his way to Tientsin to-morrow morning—but that, of course, is impossible.... He is not in condition to answer questions, although undoubtedly much is in his dazed and stricken brain for which the world is at this moment waiting.

In his half-delirium, Morning seems occupied with the loss of a certain sorrel mare. He also reports the loss of his complete story of the battle, the preliminary fighting, the generals in character sketch, the terrain and all, covering a period of four months up to the moment of General Zarubaieff’s withdrawal from the city proper. This manuscript, said to contain over a hundred thousand words done on Chinese parchment, was in a wallet with the writer’s money, and was cut from him in the struggle on the bank of the Liao, when the wounds were received. His assailants were doubtless Hun huises.

Whatever can be said about the irrational parts of his story, the young man appears to know the story of the battle from the Russian standpoint. He brings the peculiar point of view that it was the millet that defeated the Russians, although the superiority of the Japanese in morale, markmanship, fluidity, is well known, etc.

... Morning lay in a decent room at the Rest House in Shanhaikwan. There seemed an ivory finger in his brain pointing to the sea—to Japan, to the States. So long as he was walking, riding, entrained, all was well enough, and the rest was mere body that had to obey—but when he stopped, the ivory finger grew hot or icy by turns; and as now, he watched in agony for the day and the departure of the train for Tientsin.

He would require help. Below the waist he was excruciating wreckage that for the present would not answer his will.... They were good to him here. The Chinese coolies had been good to him on the open car.... Lowenkampf, Fallows, good to him—so his thoughts ran—the sorrel Eve was his own heart’s mate. He loved her running, dying, striking. She had run until her heart broke. He could not do less. She had run until she was past pain—he must do that—and go on after that.... Was it still in his brain—the great story? Would it clear and write itself—the great story?

That was the question. All was well if he could get Liaoyang out in words. He would do it all over again on the ship. Every day the ship would be carrying him closer to the States. He was still on schedule. He would reach America on the first possible ship after the battle of Liaoyang—possibly, ahead of mails. On the voyage he would re-do the book—twenty days—five thousand words a day. He might do it better. It might come up clean out of the journey, the battle itself and the pictures strengthened, brightened, impregnated with fresh power.... Three weeks—every moment sailing to the States—the first and fastest ship!... The driving devil in his brain would be at rest. The big story would clear, as he began to write. The days of labor at first would change to days of pure instrumentation. He would drive at first—then the task would drive him.... But he must not miss a possible day to Japan—to Nagasaki.... He had not money for the passage to America. At this very moment he could not get out of bed—but these two were mere pups compared to the wolves he had met....

They found him on the floor drawing on his clothes in the morning—an hour before the train. His wounds were bleeding, but he laughed at that.

“You see, I’ve got to make it. You’ve been very kind. I’ll heal on the way—not here. I’ve got the big story. I’ve got to keep moving to think it out. I can’t think here. I’ll get on—thank you.”

And he was on. That night his train stopped for ten minutes at Tongu, the town near the Taku Forts, at the mouth of the Pei-ho.... All day he had considered the chance of getting ship here, without going on to Tientsin, seventy miles up-river. The larger ships lightered their traffic from Tongu; he might catch a steamer sailing to-night for Japan, or at least for Chifu.... It was getting dark.

The face that looked through the barred window at the Englishman in charge of the station at Tongu unsettled the latter’s evening and many evenings afterward.

“Is there a ship from the river-mouth to-night?”

Morning repeated his question, and perceived that the agent had dropped his eyes to the two hands holding the ticket-shelf. Morning’s nails were tight in the wood; he would wobble if he let go.

“Yes, there’s the little Tungsheng. She goes off to-night——”

“For Japan?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t carry passengers—that is—unless the Captain gives up his quarters, and he has already done that this trip.”

“Deck passengers——”

“Sure, all carry coolies out of here—best freight we have.”

“Do you sell the tickets?”

“Who’s going?”

“My servant.... I won’t go on to Tientsin if I can get—get him on to-night——”

“The launch and lighter are supposed to be down shortly from Tientsin—that’s all I can say. It’s blowing a bit. She may not clear.”

“She’ll clear if any does?”

“Yes, Himmelhock has taken her out of here worse than this. You’d better decide—I’ve got to go out now. The train’s leaving.”

Seventy miles up the river, he thought,—the wrong way if he stuck to the train. Every mile that ivory finger would torture him. His brain now seemed holding back an avalanche. If he chose falsely, he would tumble down the blackness with the rocks and glaciers.... This Englishman looked a gamester—he might help. Perhaps he wasn’t a corpse.

“I’ll stay,” he said, and the story and all his purpose wobbled and grew black.... He mustn’t forget. He mustn’t fall.... So he stood there holding fast to the ticket-shelf, which he could not feel—held and held, and the train clattered, grew silent, and it was dark.

“Where’s your servant?”

Morning’s lips moved.

“Where is your servant?”

“I am my servant.”

“I can’t give a white man deck passage. It’s not only against the rules—but against reason.”

Morning groped for his arm. “Take me into the light,” he said.

The man obeyed.

“What day is this?”

“Night of September six.”

“I left Liaoyang the night of the third. I rode a good horse to death—along the Taitse, over the Hun and the Liao. I rode through the Hun huises twice. I was all cut up and beaten—the horse went over backward in the Hun, and in the gut on the bank of the Liao.... I was in Liaoyang for the battle. I was there four months waiting for the battle. They took my story—hundred thousand words—the Hun huises did, in the fight on the Liao bank. The horse killed herself running with me ... but I’ve got it all in my head—the story. I’ll get to the States with it before any mail—before any other man. It’s all in my head—the whole Russian-end. I can write it again on the ship to the States in three weeks.... I’ve got to get off to-night. You’re the one to help me.... See these——”

Morning opened his shirt and then started to undo his legging.

“For God’s sake—don’t.... But you’ll die on the deck——”

“No, the only way to kill me would be to wall me up—so I couldn’t keep moving.”

“I’ll go down to the river with you in a few minutes.”

And then he had John Morning sobbing on his shoulder.

17

The Englishman at Tongu was a small, sallow man, with the face of one who is used to getting the worst of it. Tongu, as a post, was no exception from an outsider’s point of view. Morning saw this face in odd lights during the days that followed. It came to the chamber of images—and always he wanted to break down, and his hands went out for the shoulder.... He remembered a pitching junk in the windy blackness at the mouth of the Pei-ho. (He had seen the low mud-flats of the Taku forts from here in another service.)... The Tungsheng looked little—not much bigger than the junk, and she was wooden. There was chill and a slap of rain in the blackness.

“Hul-lo, who is dere?” The slow, juicy voice came from the door of the pilot-house.

“Endicott. I’ve got a deck passenger——”

“Huh—dere dick as meggots alretty——”

“This is a kitchen coolie of mine—he must go. Send someone down to make a place and take his transportation——”

The grumbling that followed was a matter of habit rather than of effectiveness. Morning seemed to see the lower lip from which the voice came, a thick and loppy member.... The mate came down, stepping from shoulder to back, across the complaining natives. They were three deep on the deck. He kicked clear a hole in the lee of the cabin.... Morning sank in, and Endicott bent to whisper:

“Put the grub-basket between your knees and don’t take your hands off it.... Put the blanket over it. It’s a thick, good blanket. I could give you a better passage, but they wouldn’t take you—honest, they wouldn’t. If they see you’re white, tell old Himmelhock you’re Endicott’s house-coolie. He can’t do anything now.... If you live, write and send the big story to Endicott at Tongu.”

Morning was sinking to sleep. He felt the warmth of the blanket, a thick, rough blanket Endicott had donated. Its warmth was like the man’s heart.... Morning’s hands went out. A coolie growled at him.... There was no worry now. It was the night of the sixth, and he was sailing. He could do no more; the ivory finger in his brain neither froze nor burned.... The pitching did not rouse him—nor the men of sewers and fields—sick where they sat—woven, matted together, trusting to the animal heat of the mass to keep from dying of exposure. John Morning lay in the midst of them—John Morning whose body would not die.

The days and nights rushed together....

Sometimes he wondered if he were not back at the shipping—in some stock-car with the horses—but horses were so clean compared to this.... When he could think, he put clean lint to his wounds. He scorned pain, for he was on his way; and much was merciful coma.

There was rain, deluges; and though the air rose heavy as amber afterward, the freshness at the time was salvation. He learned as it is probable no other American ever learned, what it means to live in the muck of men. All one at the beginning and at the ending, it is marvelous how men separate their lives in the interval—how little they know of one another, and how easily foolish noses turn up. Here was a man alive—dreaming of the baths he had missed, of Japanese Inn baths most of all.

“Who am I?” he asked.... “John Morning,” would whip back to him from somewhere. “And who in hell is John Morning to revolt at the sufferings of other men?”

He had seen the coolies in the steerage of many ships—even these massed deck passages of the Yellow and China Seas and the Coasting trade. He had looked at them before as one looks into a cage of animals. Now he was one of those who looked out, one of the slumees. Once he asked, “Is this the bottom of the human drain, and if not—must I sink to it?”

The Chinese did steal his food that first night, but fed him occasionally from their own stock. Finding him white, they fouled him, but kept him warm.... The Tungsheng ran into Chifu harbor to avoid a storm, and a full day was lost. John Morning had no philosophy then—a hell-minded male full of sickness—not good to view, even through the bars of a cage. But at best to sit five hours, where he sat more than five days and nights, would condemn the mind of any white man or woman to chaos, or else restore it to the fine sanity of Brotherhood.

And then the day when the breeze turned warm and the Islands were green!... Coolies were men that hour, men with eyes that melted to ineffable softness. It was like Jesus coming toward them on the sea—the green hills of Japan. Their hearts broke with emotion; they wept and loved one another—this mass all molten and integrated into one. It was like the Savior coming to meet them through the warm bright air. He would make them clean; their eyes would follow Him always....

Morning was not the only one who had to be carried ashore at Shimoneseki, after the quarantine officer had finished with the herd. His passport saved him. “I had to come. It was the first ship out of Tongu. Deck passage was the only way they would take me,” was the simple story. He was fevered, but strangely subdued that day. Himmelhock was at the door of the pilot-house, when Morning looked up from the shore a last time, and his native sailors, bare to the thigh, were sluicing the decks.

The bath was heaven. He was able to walk afterward. The officials burned his clothing, but made it possible for him to buy a few light things. The wound in his leg was healing; the bruises fading away. The wound in his side did not heal; it was angry as a feline mouth.

He had bandages, but no stockings; clean canvas clothing, but no underwear.... He found that he had to wait before answering when anyone spoke; and then he was not quite sure if he had answered, and would try again—until they stopped him. Somewhere long ago there was a parrot whose eyes were rimmed—with red-brown, and of stony opaqueness. He couldn’t recall where the parrot was, but it had something to do with him when he was little, almost beyond memory. His eyes now felt just as the parrot’s had looked.

It was a night run back to Nagasaki by rail—his thought was of ships, ships, ships. He could stand off from the world and see the ships—all the lines of tossing, steaming ships. Then he would go down to the deck of one—and below and aft where Asiatics were crowded together. To the darkest and thickest place among them he would go, and there lie and rest until the finger in his brain roused him. Then he would find that the train had stopped. It was the halt that awakened him.

There were two ships, all but ready to clear for the States, lying in the harbor of Nagasaki that morning. The first was the liner Coptic, but she had to go north first, a day at Kobe, and two days at Yokohama, before taking the long southeastern slide to Honolulu. She was faster than the American transport, Sickles (with a light load of sick and insane from the Islands), but the latter was clearing for Honolulu at sundown and would reach San Francisco at least one day earlier than the liner. Moreover, the Coptic would have recent mails; the Sickles would beat the mails.

Money was waiting for him at Tokyo, less than an hour’s journey from Yokohama; he would have good care and a comfortable passage home on the old liner, but his brain burned at the thought. Four days north—not homeward.... The Sickles was clipper-built—she was white and clean-lined, lying out in the harbor, in the midst of black collier babies. She was off for Home to-night. He had traveled home once before on a transport. He was American and she—the flag was there, run together a bit in the vivid light, but the flag was there! And to-night he would be at sea—pulling himself together for the big story, alone with the big story—the ship never stopping—unless they stopped in ocean to drop the dead....

The actual cost of the transport passage is very little, merely a computation for food and berth; the difficulty is to obtain the permit. As it was, he had not enough money, barely enough to get up to Yokohama, second class on the Coptic; and yet, this hardly entered. It was like a home city, this American ship, to one who had been in the alien heart of the Chinese country so long. He would know someone, and a telegram from ’Frisco would bring money to him. He had a mighty reliance from the big story.

The U. S. quartermaster at Nagasaki was a tired old man. He advised Morning to cable to Manila for permission. Morning did not say that he lacked money for this, but repeated his wish to go. The old man thought a minute and then referred him to Ferry, the Sickles quartermaster. He had been doing this for thirty years, referring others to others so that all matters merely struck and glanced from him. Thus he kept an open mind. Morning wanted something to take from this office to Ferry of the Sickles. The resistance he encountered heated him. The smell of the deck-passage was in his nostrils; it seemed in his veins, and made him afraid that others caught the taint. The old quartermaster did not help him. Morning could hear his own voice, but could not hold in mind what he said.... The officer did not seem to be interested in Liaoyang. This disturbed him. It made him ask if he had not gone mad after all—if he could be wrong on this main trend, that he had something the world wanted.

He took a sampan at the harbor-front and went aboard the transport. Ferry, the Sickles quartermaster, was a tall, lean man with a shut smile that drooped. The face was a pinched and diminished Mergenthaler, and brought out the clouds and the manias of Morning’s mind.

Were all quartermasters the same? What had become of men? Had the world lost interest in monster heroisms? Ferry did not help him—on the contrary, stood looking down with the insolence of superior inches. Morning found himself telling about the sorrel mare. That would not do. He returned to the main fact that he had the big story and must get across the Pacific with it.

“I can’t take you——”

Morning heard it, but couldn’t believe. He tried to tell about the Hun huises and the loss of the manuscript, the walk to Koupangtse——

“Really—it’s no affair of mine. I can’t take you on.... The Coptic is sailing——”

And just now Mr. Reever Kennard appeared on the deck. The summer had added portliness. He was in flannels—a spectacle for children and animals.... The insignificance of all about was quickened when Mr. Reever Kennard appeared. The decks were less white, sailors, soldiers more enlisted. John Morning became an integer of the Tungsheng’s deck-passage again, and the lining of his nostrils retained the reek of it.

“How do you do, Mr. Kennard?” he said. His back was different. He felt a leniency there, very new or very ancient, as he turned to Ferry, adding: “This gentleman knows me. We parted in Tokyo this Spring, when I went over with the Russians. I met him long ago in the Philippine service. He will tell you——”

Ferry’s face grew suddenly saturnine, his eyes held in the glance of the famous correspondent’s.

“You’ll please count it closed—I can’t take you.”

Morning now turned to Kennard, who was sealing with his tongue a little flap of cigar-wrapper which may have prevented the perfect draught. Morning bowed and moved aft, where the dust of the coaling was thick, and the scores of natives, women and men, who handled the baskets, were a distraction which kept the reality from stifling him. Presently he went ashore and it was noon.... He could not understand Kennard; could not believe in an American doing what Ferry had done, to a man who had the big story of Liaoyang. It was some hideous mistake; he had not been able to make himself understood.

The Sickles launch was leaving the pier at two. Morning was there and took a seat. He was holding himself—the avalanche again—and rehearsing in his mind what he should say to Ferry. His brain was afire; the wound in his side had scalded him so long that his voice had a whimper in it. He had not eaten—the thought was repulsive—but he had bought drink in the thought of clearing his brain and deadening his hurt....

His brain was clearer on the launch, but the gin fumed out of him as he approached the upper deck, where Ferry’s quarters were.

The Quartermaster saw him, but was speaking to an infantry captain. Morning waited by the rail. Many times he thought—if he could only begin to speak now. Yet he feared in his heart when Ferry turned to him, he would fail. It was something little and testy in the man—something so different from what he had known in the great strains of Liaoyang—except for Luban. Yes, Ferry was like Luban, when Luban was in the presence of a fancied inferior.... They talked on—Morning thought of murder at last. A peculiar wiry strength gathered about the idea of murder in its connection with Ferry’s dark, mean face. He felt all the old strength in his hands, and more from days of pain—days of holding one’s self—will, body, brain.

“Well——” Ferry had turned to him suddenly.

Morning’s thoughts winged away with a swarm of details of the crime.... “I could tell you something of the Story—I could show you how they cut me on the Liao—the Hun huises——”

“If you come to this deck again—I’ll send you ashore in irons.”

At four that afternoon Morning saw the Coptic draw up her chains and slide out of the harbor, with the swift ease of a river-ferry.... He could not count himself whipped on the Sickles—and this is the real beginning of John Morning. He was Fate-driven. The man who did not have the courage to ask his rights in Tokyo—to inquire the reason of his disbarment, was not through with the American transport Sickles. A full day ahead of the mails in San Francisco—and he was waiting for the dusk. The fight had been brought to him. He was dull to the idea of being whipped.

Three enlisted men were drinking in the little apothecary shop which Morning had used for the day’s headquarters. They belonged to the Sickles. They had been taking just one more drink for many minutes. He told them he was sailing on the transport and joined them in a sampan to the ship when it was dark. The harbor was still as a dream; the dark blending with the water.... They touched the bellying white plates of the ship. Morning seemed to come up from infinite depths.... The men were very drunk; they had ordered rapidly toward the end; the effect caught up as swiftly now. They helped each other officiously. Morning put on the fallen hat of one who had become unconscious.... The watch was of them, a corporal, who was no trouble-maker. He blustered profusely and hurried them below.... Morning was bewildered. He had spoken no word, but helped the others carry the body, a wobbly deputation, down among the hammocks.... He heard the voices of those maimed in mind.... He placed his end of the soldier’s body down, left his companions, and made his way forward, to where the hammocks were farther apart. Early years had given him a sort of enlisted man’s consciousness of things; and he knew now not to take another’s place. He chose one from a pile of hammocks and slung it forward, close to the bulk-head of the bedlam, and well out of the lights.... He lay across his only baggage, a package containing a thousand sheets of Chinese parchment. He lay rigid, trying to remember if out-going ships took a pilot out of Nagasaki.

He heard the anchor-chain. He was very close to it. The voices of the sun-struck and vino-maddened men from the Islands were deadened by the hideous grating of the links in the socket.... It was not too late for him to be put ashore even now; since it was war-time. Of course there would be a pilot, for the harbor was mined.... He drew the canvas about his ears, but the voices of the brain-dead men reached him.... Cats, pirates, and river-reptiles terrified them; one man was still lost in a jungle set with bolo-traps; the emptiness of others was filled by strange abominations glad of the flesh again.

18

He had been listening to Duke Fallows for a long time—Duke’s voice blended with war and storm and a woman’s laugh.... Then he reverted to the idea of murdering Ferry. Finally someone said:

“He’s a new one from Nagasaki. He’s got the fevers——”

And then:

“Who in hell is he?”

They began to ask questions. Morning answered nothing. Day had come. He heard the throb of the engines, felt the swell of the sea, but the strength of yesterday’s concentration was still upon him. It had built a wall around him, holding the life of his mind there; as a life of low desires imprisons the spirit to its own vile region after death.... He did not speak, but looked from face to face for Ferry.

They ceased to expect an answer from him.... A young doctor appeared. His eyes rolled queerly; his cheek folded over his mouth, as if he were beyond words from drink, and tremendously pleased with his prowess. They called him Nevin. He prepared himself profoundly for speech. Morning now realized the nimbleness of Nevin’s hands, unwinding the filthy bandages. Presently, the Doctor straightened up, passed his hand over his brow, tongued the other cheek, and after a sweating suspense ordered:

“Take him to the hospital.”

A white room.... The Doctor came again. They took his clothing and bathed him.... He heard and smelled the sea through an open port ... glad, but utterly weary ... waiting for Ferry.

“My God—not only cut, but trampled——” a voice said.

Morning felt if he were alone with Nevin he could have said something.... The Doctor looked like a jockey he had once known. It wasn’t that, however, that gave him heart, but the quick, gentle hands.... More and more as he watched the dusty face with its ineffable gravity, he saw bright humanity burning like a forge-fire behind the mask. This brought tears to his own eyes. Nevin, seeing them, became altogether nervous to look at, seemed to have a walnut in his mouth.

And now John Morning felt himself breaking—he was brittle, hard like glass—and his last idea concerned the package of Chinese parchment which they had not brought from the hammock.... Six days afterward he asked for it.

For a short while each day, during the interval, he just touched the main idea and sank back to sleep. He suffered very little. The after-effects of his journey from Liaoyang tried to murder him in various ways, but relaxation, nourishment, good air and care worked as a sort of continuous anæsthesia. On this sixth day the Doctor appeared to ignore his question about the package of paper, but leaned forward, glanced to the right and left, as if to communicate a plan to scuttle the ship, and said:

“You’re one more little man. You’ve had a new one each day—pneumonia, sclerosis, brain-fever.... My hospital report on your case will drive the Major-Surgeon into permanent retirement.... What did you say was the matter to-day—Chinese parchment?”

“I’ve got so much to do, Doctor?... What day is this?”

“Morning of the nineteenth.”

The color swept into Morning’s face, terror into his eyes.

“I didn’t think it was so bad as that—I can’t lay up any more—twelve days left.... Two weeks and two days since I rode out of Liaoyang——”

“I’ll have to let ’em put you in the forward hutch—if you begin to talk Liaoyang, now that your fever’s down. There wasn’t any Americans in that fighting——”

“I’m not a soldier——”

Nevin wrung his hands. A thought recurred to Morning.

“There was a couple of letters in my clothes—one addressed to a paper in ’Frisco, and one to me.”

The other was curious enough to send an orderly to search.

“Have him bring the package of paper, too,” Morning said. When all was brought in good order, he added: “This letter to me I’ll read later. The larger package is Duke Fallows’ first hurried story of the battle of Liaoyang. I won’t read that either, because I’ve got to do one of my own. I did one, you know—ten times as long as this—but the Hun huises got it on the Liao-crossing, from Tawan—that’s where I got cut up. Morning of the fourth, it was.... The sorrel mare did fifteen miles with her guts sticking out, and I walked thirty to Koupangtse, with these wounds and smashed from a couple of falls—before the morning of the fifth.... You can look at Duke Fallows’ story, Doctor, and I’ll take a little doze——”

Fallows’ battle was done clearly as a football game, and as briskly, to the withdrawal of the Russian lines upon the inner positions of the city and the flanking movement of Kuroki. A dramatic pause then to survey the Russian force on the eve of disaster, from which the reader drew the big moral sickness. After that Lowenkampf, the millet and the Ploughman. In quite a remarkable way Fallows turned the reader now from the mass to the individual. In a little trampled place in the grain the battle was lost by the Russians and won by Japan.... The Doctor was interrupted several times, but no force was missed. It was a new voice to him. He wondered if Fallows would make the world hear it. It seemed to compel a reckoning.

The Fallows story laughed all the way. One did not have to look twice at a sentence to understand, yet two readings did not wear it out, nor would it leave one alone. All the time the Doctor read, matters he had heard in delirium from the lips of John Morning came back.

Nevin remembered the tears on the first morning, the choke in his own throat; the first sight of the wounds, the queer, extra zeal he had put into this case. Finally he could hardly wait to learn the rest—chiefly how John Morning had happened to be lying in the darkest end of the hammock-hole, over against the insane compartment.... Yet he did not wake up his patient. When Morning finally opened his eyes, it was time for nourishment. Nevin brought a glass of extra wine before inquiring. “First, tell me—has Ferry seen me?”

“Captain Ferry, the quartermaster?”

“Yes.”

“I’d rather think not. He’s about occasionally—but his truck with the sick men is mostly transportation and nourishment——”

“The second time I came to ask him to take me across that afternoon—the second time,” Morning said slowly, “he told me that if I appeared on his deck again he’d send me ashore in irons. You see the Sickles is to beat the Coptic in. I had to come. Why, the mails couldn’t beat me through from Liaoyang.... I finally got aboard with some soldiers—but I would have leeched to the anchor.... And, say, I think I knew you that morning. It seemed as if I could let go when I felt your hands——”

The two were quiet. The Doctor looked obliquely at an open port with one eye shut, as if he were not sure of the count....

Accompanying the manuscript was a letter to Noyes, editor of Western States, which chiefly concerned John Morning. Many brave things were said.... Nevin, deeply stirred with the whole business, saw the Ploughman coming forth from the millet—saw the Ploughman going home. That little drama so dear to Fallows’ heart was greater than Liaoyang. Nevin saw that such things are deathless.... Deathless—that’s the word. They look little at the time in the midst of thunder and carnage; but the thunder dies away and the rains come and clean the stains—and the spirit of it all lives in one deed or in one sentence. A woman nurses the sick at Scutari, and the Crimean war is known for the angel of its battlefield, by the many who do not know who fought, nor what for.... Nevin felt the big forces throbbing in the world—the work of the world. It had come to him distantly before. It had pulled him out of the comfort and ease of his home town to serve the sick at sea and in the Islands.

The mystery of service. He had never dared tell anyone. His voice broke so easily. He had covered the weakness in leers and impediments, so the world would not see. He had talked of his rights and his wages, the dusty-faced little man. Mystery of Service—and men were ashamed when it touched them.

But Fallows, laughing and so powerful, this boy’s man-friend, wasn’t afraid. Was the boy afraid? What had driven him? Did the boy know what had driven him? What, in God’s name, had driven this human engine that would not stop—that threw off poisons and readjusted itself against the individual and collective organizations of death?

Nevin was shaken by the whole story—it girded, girdled him.... Let Ferry come. Ferry was one of those bleak despoilers of human effort, whose presence consumed the reality in another. What was Ferry anyway and Ferry’s sort—a spoiled child or an ancient decadent principle? Was it merely a child-soul with a universe ahead, or was he very old and very ill—incorrigible self-love on its road back to nothing?... But the Ploughman lived, Fallows lived, the boy Morning lived—their work was marching on.

The Doctor did not speak, because his voice would break. He went about his work instead—swift magnetic hands.... At least, he could stand between Morning and the quartermaster—if there were need.

When he came back Morning was at work, a hard bright look of tension about him, and a line of white under the strange young beard....

“I think I can get it going now. I think it is beginning to come again,” he said in a hushed tone. The Doctor arranged the pillows better, sharpened an extra pencil and went out.

“I may have to do those first pages again,” he said an hour later. “It’s hard to get out of the hospital—you know, what I mean—a man’s bath is so important to one lying-up that it shuts out a battle-line. What a fool a sick man is. But I’ll get it——”

He fell asleep in the dusk before the candles came. The Doctor found him cool, his breathing normal.... The next day Morning worked until Nevin remonstrated.

“You’ll die, if you go on——”

“I’ll die, if I don’t,” said Morning. The Doctor knew in his heart that it was true. Still they compromised. That night, as Morning dropped down into an abyss of exhaustion, he mumbled the whole story of Eve—the sorrel mare. “She rose to her feet—white death in her eyes,” he finished....

Nothing attracts the eye on ship-board like a man at work. All idle ones are caught in the current and come to pay their devoirs to the man mastered by a strong task.... The Doctor had Morning taken to an extra berth in his own state-room. The door had a spring lock, for many medicines and stores were there. Ferry was not likely to happen in the Doctor’s quarters. The latter even doubted if he would recognize Morning. He came and went, as the task drove on. Once Morning stopped to tell him about the deck passage on the Tungsheng, and another time about his brush with the Hun huises in the ravine across the river from Tawan.... The Doctor saw that Morning had made a wonderful instrument of himself; he studied how the passion of an artist works on the body of man. The other found that so long as he ate regularly and fell asleep without a struggle—he was allowed to go on.

The Sickles was swinging down into the warmth. The sick man had a bad day, lying in the harbor at Honolulu.

“It isn’t the work, Doctor—it’s the ship’s stopping,” Morning said, squirming in the berth. “It makes my head hot. I see steamy and all that. I had it when the Tungsheng lay up for a day in Chifu on account of the blow.... I had it that day in Nagasski when Ferry wouldn’t take me on. I’ll be all right to-night.... Give me a little touch of that gin and lime juice——”

“Just lime juice when heads get hot.... You’re a clever little drunkard. I’ve been wondering how far you’d go.... Yes, we’ll clear to-night.... Ferry’s ashore. Come out and see the black boys dive for pennies.”

“There’s something doing with this knife-wound—it doesn’t heal,” the Doctor said, mid-way between the Islands and the Farallonnes. “The leg’s all right. Organs and all the little organs seem to thrive on work. That is, they’re no worse. The leg heals—but this one—you seem to have established a permanent drain——”

“Fifty pages yesterday—two hundred words a page,” Morning muttered.

“Yes—and the day before—and to-morrow—and the night we left Honolulu.... If a man worked that way for money, he’d be as dead as Ferry inside of a month.... Have you read your friend Fallows’ story yet?”

“No, I don’t dare—a sick man isn’t all himself. And this story is me. It’s got to be me. It’s better in places than the other, the one I lost.... I haven’t read Duke’s letter to me yet. He’s strong medicine. He keeps coming back to me, as it is. I want to get off alone when the work is done and think. You can’t see him all, when he’s in a room with you.... He was like you, in being a friend to me.... Yet, I seem to know you better. You’ve helped me so. I’m pretty happy the way the story is coming——”

“See how long you can go without a drink to-day.”

“It starts me off, you see. It doesn’t seem to touch me—just steams right off with the work——”

“That’s rotten sophistry. I’m watching you——”

Nevin had never seen a body so driven by will. Morning appeared no worse; certainly he was no better; his brain was in absolute abeyance; his will crashed through clouds of enervation and irresolution. There were times when Nevin believed Morning would collapse, when he was finished with Liaoyang, but he was not so sure now. He was sure, however, that he must not interfere except in extremity.... This was part of the big work. Somehow he trusted in Duke Fallows—who had allowed the boy to write the detailed battle-end, and gone back to Europe to feed the babes of the Ploughman. That last made him want to doctor the whole world....

Morning had done the story and re-written the lead. The Sickles would enter the Gate at daylight.

“There’s seventy-five or eighty thousand words of it. It’s good—unless I’m crazy. It’s good, unless this is all a dream. God, I’m thirsty.”

With the work done for the day, however, he asked for lime juice and water. His temperature was less than two points above normal; nothing had broken; yet the voyage had not replenished Morning’s body. He could hardly stand.

“To-night I’ll read the Fallows’ stuff—and the letters.... Doctor, can you get me ashore early?”

“Think a minute—you don’t know what you ask——”

“Quarantine——”

Nevin nodded. “There’s extra attention to a ship like this—they’ll have to see that running wound of yours for instance——”

“Not if you don’t report it——”

The Doctor’s lower jaw reached down, and to the right, finding the walnut. “You wouldn’t even read Duke Fallows’ story before you wrote yours. A man can’t lie in his own work——”

“You’ve been so good,” Morning said huskily. “I begin to expect miracles——”

“You can get messages—telegrams, letters—ashore.... And then it may only take a couple of hours. There isn’t any contagion here that I know of.”

Morning first read Fallows’ letter to Noyes, editor Western States. It told of the story accompanying—but more of the bearer. Laughing, loving-hearted, eloquent—Fallows was all through it, and fine gifts of the man’s thinking. There was suggestion to Noyes to use Morning’s story and get it across simultaneously in New York. “The boy has never yet, so far as I can see, found time to arrange a decent payment for his work. Please observe that unless some one, equally as capable, gets into Port Arthur, Morning’s story will be the biggest feature of the war in a newspaper way. I’m going on to Europe on the Ploughman story. Let Morning do the big battle—I’ll begin to crackle later.”

And then Morning read the story.... His voice trailed up finally from the shadows of lower berth. “It’s good,” he said to the Doctor after midnight.

“It’s dam’ good. It’s better than mine.... He was alive with it—I mean with the Ploughman. It’s the way he did it. He tried to get it across before we separated. He told me from every angle—told Lowenkampf—told them all at the station at Yentai. None of us could see.... He was crazed about it—that we couldn’t see. We were all choked with blood and death that night. He said Kuropatkin and the others would see that the Ploughman was right—if they had a sense of humor. Such density to humor, he called the sin against the Holy Ghost——”

After they had talked many minutes, Morning broke the seal to his own letter and learned why he had been barred from the earlier Japanese armies.

19

The fineness of Fallows, of Nevin, of Endicott, the station-agent at Tongu, the risen humanity of the Ploughman—Morning’s soul to sense these men was empty within him. All that he knew was blood and blow and force and mass and hate. He lay panting and possessed. As he had plotted in delirium how to kill Ferry, dwelling upon the process and the death; so Reever Kennard came in now for a hatred as perfect and destructive. The letter had called up something of the same force which had driven John Morning from Liaoyang, over or through every barrier to the present hour in which the Sickles lay off the entrance of the Golden Gate waiting for dawn, thirty-six hours ahead of the Coptic.

His work was diminished in his own mind; the value of his story was lost, the zest to market it, the sense of the world’s waiting. He was a thief in the eyes of men. A man cannot steal. They believed him a thief.... He thought of moving about the halls of the Imperial that day—of his thoughts as he had watched from the window in the billiard-room while the picture was taken. He had been tranced in terror.... Had he but known, he would have made a hell in that house. He saw Reever Kennard again on the deck of the Sickles—his turning to Kennard for help—unparalleled shame.... The thing he desired with such terrible zeal now was enacted in his brain. That hour on the deck of the Sickles was repeated, but this time he knew what Kennard had done. He called him to the lie in imagination. The jowl was heavy with scorn and the small slow eyes were bright with fear—yet they took nothing back and Morning moved closer and closer demanding, until the devil broke from him, and his knotted hand sank into the soft center of the man. He watched the writhing of that clean flanneled liar, watched him arise. The hand sank once more ... the vile play romping through his mind again and again—hideous fighting of a man brought up among stable and race-track and freight-route ruffians—the fighting that feels no pain and only a knockout can stop....

“Wow—it’s hot as hell in here,” came from Nevin in the upper bunk.

A little before dawn, utterly ravaged by the poison of his thinking, Morning was struck by the big idea. He turned on the light, steadied himself to paper and pencil and wrote to Noyes of the Western States:

Inclosed find (I) Duke Fallows’ first story of Liaoyang; (II) his letter to you, containing among other things information concerning the bearer; (III) the first ten thousand words of my eighty-thousand-word story of the battle fought a month ago to an hour—including sketches of Kuropatkin, and others, covering exactly terrain, the entire position, strategy, and finally the cause of the Russian disaster, with word-picture of the retreat, done on the day when it was at its height. The writer left the field and made the journey to Koupangtse alone, nearly one hundred miles to the railroad. This is the only American eye-witness story besides Fallows’. The mails of the second-hand reports will not reach here before the arrival of the Coptic.... I will sell this story to the Western States on condition that it appear in the World-News, New York, simultaneously—the story to be run in not less than seven installments, beginning by telegraph to-morrow. I insist on the World-News, but have no objection to the general syndicating of the story by the Western States, my price for the American newspaper rights being $1,800 and transportation to New York.

“In God’s name, are you doing another book?” Nevin demanded, letting himself down from the berth. “What’s the matter—you’re on fire?”

Morning was counting off the large first installment of his manuscript. He placed it upon the table, with the Fallows’ story and the two letters to Noyes.... Then he put an empty water-pitcher on it, restoring the balance of his story to its place under his pillow.

“Listen” he said, clutching Nevin’s arm, “here’s the whole thing—if I’m sick to-morrow. Give it to the reporter from the Western States—make him see it is life-blood. Make him rush with it to Noyes. It’s the whole business.... He’ll get it—before the quarantine is lifted, if you—oh, if you can! It’s all there.... You do this for me?”

“And where will you be all this time——”

“Oh, Nevin—Nevin—for God’s sake put me to sleep! I’m full of burning and devils! Fill up that needle business and put me to sleep!... I can’t wait to get across in the New York World-News. That’s Reever Kennard’s own paper.”

20

The voices sounded far and muted—voices one might hear when swimming under water. It was easier for him to stay down than rise and answer. He seemed carried in the strong flow of a river, and preserved a consciousness, very vague, that it meant death to go down with the stream. At last, opening his eyes, he saw the city over the pier-sheds.

The rest of the manuscript was still under the pillow, but the water-pitcher rested upon the bare wood of the table. It was after twelve. His deadly fury had burned itself out. The thought of the World-News taking the story, steadied his weakness. It was much harder to dress than usual, however. He had no shore clothes, but Nevin would see to that for him. With a glad thrill, he realized that the Sickles had passed the quarantine, or she wouldn’t be in the slip. His mind turned to Nevin again, and when he was thinking about this deep-rooted habit the voyage had inculcated, the Doctor himself entered.

“Well, you gave me a night.”

“You’ll have some rest now.”

“I’ve brought some clothes for you to go ashore with.... The Western States got your story two hours ago. Ferry has gone ashore.”

“Did the reporter take it here—or from across the harbor in quarantine?”

“He was waiting with others—for us to be turned loose. I gave him the stuff as we were putting about. He didn’t come aboard, I saw his launch reach landing. I told him to put the stuff into the hands of Noyes and to hurry back. All of which he did——”

“Why to hurry back?”

The little man’s mouth gave way to strange twistings, and he answered grudgingly, “Well, I had a story to give him.”

Morning took a room at the Armory, refusing a loan from the Doctor. “I’ll have it shortly—plenty, I think. I’ll lie up there until I hear from Noyes. I may hurry East——”

The process was not clear exactly, but the old story of Mio Amigo had given him a terror of borrowing. The Armory was nearby. It was clean and cheap. This little decision of choosing the Armory, a result of Mio Amigo, too, is the most important so far.... The Doctor went with him. The two were hushed and sick with things to say. Nevin felt he was losing the throb of great service; that he could not hold it all after this power-house of a man went his way. It was not only Morning, but Morning was attached to the large, quiet doings and seeings of the stranger named Duke Fallows.

Morning loved the Doctor. Nevin did not tower; Nevin was instantly in his comprehension. Their throats tightened.... Nevin saw him to the light little room, and said as he was leaving:

“I’ve been all over Chinatown, looking up a formula for that wound that won’t heal. It’s this—full directions inclosed. You’ll have to get settled before you try it out.”

He disappeared saying he would be back. Morning put the envelope in a wallet, which he had carried afield.... It was not yet two in the afternoon. There was a timorous rap at the door. Morning’s head dropped over drowsily. The door opened just a little and a voice said:

“Is there a sick American soldier in here?”

It was low and timorous like the tapping, but there was a laugh in it, and something that drove the wildness out of his heart.

“Yes,” he said.

“And may I come in?”

“Yes.”

She was slight and young and pale. She passed between the window and his eyes. Her brown hair seemed half-transparent. The day was bright, but not yellow; its soft gray luster was exactly the woman’s tone. There was a curious unreality about the whole figure. The light in her eyes was like the light in the window; gray eyes and very deep. So quietly, she came, and the day was quiet, the house—a queer hush everywhere.

“There are a few of us who meet the transports—and call on the sick soldiers. We talk to them—write letters or telegrams. Sometimes they are very glad. All we want is to help. I haven’t tried many times before——”

Someone had told him once of a woman in London, who met the human drift in from the far tides of chance—and made their passing or their healing dear as heaven. He had always kept the picture. He scarcely heard all that this young woman was saying.

She was not beautiful, not even pretty. You would see her last in a room full of women. Under her eyes—he could not tell just where—there was a line or shadow of strange charm; and where the corner of her eye-lids folded into the temple a delicate perfection lived; her frail back had a line of beauty—again, he could not describe this. The straightness of the figure was that of lightness, of aspiration.... Sometimes she seemed just a girl. Her underlip pursed a little; it was not red.... She seemed waiting with the lightness of a thistle—waiting and listening in the lull before a wind.

“My name is Betty Berry.”

“Mine is John Morning.”

She told him that she was a musician, and that San Francisco was her home, although she was much away. He saw her with something that Duke Fallows had given him. The hush deepened with the thought. Had he taken from that tired breast a certain age and clear-eyedness and judgment of the ways of love-women? There might have been reality in this; certainly there was reality in his not having seen a white girl in many months. He was changed; his work done for the moment; he was very tired and hungry for something she brought.... “Betty Berry.”

He was changed. This Western world was new to him. He seemed old to the East—old, much-traveled, and very weary; here was faith and tenderness and reality. Duke Fallows’ city—Duke had strangely intrenched himself here; and this wraith of an angel who came to him ministering!... Malice and ambition—reprisal and murder were gone. What a dirty little man he had been—how rotten with self, how furious and unspeakable. Why had he not seen it? Why had he rejected Duke Fallows with his brain and accepted him with his soul? The soul—what queer place in a man is this? Duke Fallows, Lowenkampf—were in and out, and Nevin, even the Ploughman now; and this little gray hushed spirit of a girl had come straight to his soul. Why could one not always feel these Presences? Would such destroying and malignant hatred return as that for Reever Kennard last night? Was it because he had been so passionate for self—that until now, (when he was resting and she came), decency, delight, nor vision had been able to break through the deadly self-turned currents?... This was like his finer self coming into the room.

“How did you know that boys coming home—need to see you?” he asked. He had to be very careful and arrange what he meant to say briskly and short. Most of his thoughts would not do at all to speak.

“Women know. So many boys come home—like those on the Sickles whom one is not allowed to see. I have watched them going out, too. They don’t know why they go. They don’t expect to find a new country, and yet it seems as if they must go and look. And many come home so numbed with loneliness that they have forgotten what they need.”

“Then women know what boys—men are?”

She smiled, and seemed listening—her lips pursed, her eyes like a cloudy dawn, turned from him slightly. What did she hear continually that did not come to him?

“I mean the men,” he added, “whom the world calls its bravest—the gaunt explorers and fighters—do women know what boys they are?”

“I don’t know those whom the world calls its bravest.”

“I think I needed to have you come,” he said, “but I didn’t know it.”

The hush was in the room again. Morning felt like a little boy—and as if she were a child with braids behind. They felt wonderful things, but could only talk sillinesses.... There was something different about her every time he looked. It seemed if she were gone; he could not summon her face to mind. He did not understand it then.

It had grown quite a little darker before they noticed. The far rumble of thunder finally made them see a storm gathering.

“You won’t go until it’s over?”

“It might be better for me to go now—before it begins.”

“Do you live far?”

“Yes.”

“Then stay—please.”

She drew her chair closer. They tried to tell each other of what they had been, but this didn’t prosper. The peculiar thing was that their history seemed to begin from now—all was far and unimportant but this. Morning, moreover, did not mean to spoil the primary idea in her mind of his being an American soldier; though all his recent history impinged upon the one fact that he wasn’t.... He tried to hold her face in his mind with shut eyes, but it was a forced and unfair picture when mentally dragged there.... The thunder increased and the rain.

“Once when I was little,” she said, “I was alone in the house when a storm came, and I was so frightened that day—that I never could be since, in just the same way.”

Perfect revelation. Something in him wished she were pretty. She was such a shy and shadowy creature. He called to mind the girls he had known—coarse and tawdry lot, poor things. Betty Berry was all that they were not; yet some of them were prettier. He could see their faces quite distinctly, and this startled him, because shutting his eyes from full gaze at this girl, he could not see her twice the same.... The weather cleared. They were together in silence for moments at a time. She became more and more like a wraith when the natural dusk thickened.

“Was it hard for you to knock and speak—that first moment?”

“Yes.”

“Do—do any of the soldiers ever misunderstand?”

“No——”

“That’s fine of them,” he granted.

“They couldn’t when one has no thought, only to be kind to them——”

“You think they see that at once?”

“They must.”

“A man doesn’t know all about soldiers simply because he ‘soldiers’ with them,” Morning said.

“And then——”

“Yes——”